The Cosmic Microwave Background Has a Cold Spot... And We Dont Know Why | Brian Cox

The Cosmic Microwave Background Has a Cold Spot... And We Don't Know Why | Brian Cox

In 2001, NASA's WMAP satellite mapped the cosmic microwave background - the oldest light in the universe, a baby picture from 380,000 years after the Big Bang. And there was something in that picture that shouldn't be there. A cold spot. Roughly one billion light-years across. Significantly cooler than it should be. Too big, too cold, too improbable to fit our models.

In 2013, ESA's Planck satellite confirmed it. The cold spot is real. But we still don't know what caused it.

The most straightforward explanation is a supervoid - an enormous region with fewer galaxies than average. In 2015, researchers found one in that direction. Problem is, even that supervoid isn't big enough to fully explain the temperature deficit. It accounts for maybe 30% of what we observe. The rest remains unexplained.

Alternative theories get progressively more exotic. Maybe it's evidence of a collision between our universe and another universe in a multiverse. Maybe it's a cosmic defect left over from the Big Bang. Maybe it's telling us our fundamental assumptions about cosmic homogeneity are wrong. Maybe it's just a one-in-a-hundred-thousand statistical fluctuation.

We've had twenty years to figure this out. Multiple satellite missions. Hundreds of physicists. Thousands of papers. And we're not significantly closer to understanding it. The cosmic microwave background is supposed to be solved - one of the great triumphs of cosmology. Yet here's this billion-light-year anomaly sitting in our data like a question mark. And we don't know why.

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This channel is independently produced, inspired by Professor Brian Cox's scientific communication. We hold no official affiliation with Professor Cox or his institutions. The narration uses synthetic voice technology for accessible storytelling. Our mission is to bring the wonder of the cosmos to audiences worldwide. We hold profound respect for Professor Cox's contributions to science.

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