National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Huge Cold Spot in Early Universe Not so Cold After All?


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The orbiting WMAP satellite (left) and the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico both saw an anomalous cold spot (blue) in a temperature map of the ancient and diffuse afterglow of the big bang.

Quelling theories of a mysterious supervoid or even proof of a parallel universe, a September 2009 study says the region is actually a completely unspecial fluke of statistics.

Illustration by Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF, NASA