Did Ya See?

Shared by Mystech

So yes, there is still hope that there is a sea of nigh-infinite multiverses, and in one or more, you did hook up with that celebrity crush.

As it turns out, the Universe may not be all that universal.

Everything we know and can see may be but one tapioca ball in a gigantic cosmic bubble tea. That is just one of the possibilities that can be inferred from data collected from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

Some background on the cosmic background: When using a traditional optical telescope to look between the stars, the far ends of the observable Universe appear pitch black. However, if you were to switch to a radio telescope, a faint ripply background glow is detected emanating from all directions. This is the CMB (which is strongest in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus the name).

The CMB is often described as the residual energy leftover after the Big Bang. It also represents the farthest observable boundaries of our Universe (and the farthest back in time). Scientists have no direct way to detect what, if anything, is beyond.

However, one guess of what is lies beyond is the theory of “eternal inflation.” Eternal Inflation hypothesizes that our universe is just one fixture of a larger multiverse. The theory speculates that our universe as being a bubble that exists in a larger void among other self-contained universii (other universes which may even follow radically different laws of physics).

If this theory is true, cosmologists might expect to see “bruises” in the CMB where our universe bumped into others. According to a recent report from a team at the University College London, they may have discovered just that, and maybe even as many as four colossal brush-ups. The paper [PDF here] is based on data collected from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP), which has been collecting data from the far reaches of the (known) Universe for the past decade.

However, since no one knows exactly what a cosmos-sized bruise might look like, this remains, for now, just a very intriguing theory. However, scientists are hopeful that a more detailed dataset will come from the European Space Agency’s ongoing Planck mission which launched in 2009.

Crazy.

via PopSci, image credit: ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia