Spot May Be Cosmic Defect

Here is a truly "cool" story as it has to do with space, and it is definitely cold out there. A cold spot in the oldest radiation in the universe could be the first sign of a cosmic glitch that might have originated shortly after the Big Bang, British and Spanish scientists said on Thursday. They think this spot, detected on satellite maps of microwave radiation, might be a cosmic defect or texture, a holdover from the universe's infancy. But they said their theory would need confirmation.

A quick synopsis of the Big Bang Theory:
The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.

In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.

The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions.

The more questions that are answered, the more questions that arise. It is one of the best things about being a human. The eternal quest for knowledge and trying to understand our place in the Universe!





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