Astronomers solve 'Cold Spot' mystery

Washington, April 20: Astronomers may have found an explation for the existence of the “Cold Spot” which may be “the largest individual structure ever identified by humanity”. In 2004, astronomers examining a map of the radiation leftover from the Big Bang discovered the “Cold Spot” — a larger-than-expected unusually cold area of the sky. The physics surrounding the Big Bang theory predicts warmer and cooler spots of various sizes in the infant universe, but a spot this large and this cold was unexpected.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Istvan Szapudi of the institute for astronomy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, have discovered what might be the largest known structure in the universe that leaves its imprint on cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.

If the Cold Spot origited from the Big Bang itself, it could be a rare sign of exotic physics that the standard cosmology (basically, the Big Bang theory and related physics) does not explain. “If, however, it is caused by a foreground structure between us and the CMB, it would be a sign that there is an extremely rare large-scale structure in the mass distribution of the universe,” Szapudi added.  (ians)

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