Oct 29, 2026 · 18 min · 12 segments
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Matt O'DowdHost
If you study a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, you may notice a large deep blue splotch on the lower right.

Is this feature a statistical fluke, the signature of vast supervoids, or even the imprint of another universe? Is that giant cold spot in the cosmic microwave background really evidence of a collision with another universe? That's what all the media hype is saying, which means it's time for another space time journal club to sort it out.

Today we're going to talk about a fascinating new publication by Mackenzie et al.

The leading explanation for the cold spot was that it was imprinted on the cosmic microwave background radiation as that radiation passed through giant empty regions of the universe, so-called supervoids.

The evidence against part tells us that the authors think that this hypothesis is wrong.

This is partly what excited everyone about the alternative bubble universe collision hypothesis.

Before we go into detail about either of these hypotheses, let's get the basics down.

It's the light that was released at the moment that the first atoms formed, 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

When it formed in the early hot universe, it was mostly infrared light with a temperature of 3,000 Kelvin.

13 and 1 half billion years of cosmic expansion later, and it stretched to microwave wavelengths.

Although it's very smooth, the CMB does show lots of very tiny fluctuations in temperature.

We think that they came from random quantum fluctuations from the very first instant after the Big Bang.

These were then amplified by a period of exponential expansion in the very early universe that we call inflation.

The typical deviation from the average temperature is around 20 microkelvin, so the differences are one part in 100,000.

The cold spot, which is in the direction of the southern constellation Eridanus, is 150 microkelvin cooler than the average.

It's also huge, 10 degrees across for the coldest patch, with a less extreme halo and hot rim that's 20 degrees across.

If you study a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, you may notice a large deep blue splotch on the lower right.

Is this feature a statistical fluke, the signature of vast supervoids, or even the imprint of another universe? Is that giant cold spot in the cosmic microwave background really evidence of a collision with another universe? That's what all the media hype is saying, which means it's time for another space time journal club to sort it out.

Today we're going to talk about a fascinating new publication by Mackenzie et al.

The leading explanation for the cold spot was that it was imprinted on the cosmic microwave background radiation as that radiation passed through giant empty regions of the universe, so-called supervoids.

The evidence against part tells us that the authors think that this hypothesis is wrong.

This is partly what excited everyone about the alternative bubble universe collision hypothesis.

Before we go into detail about either of these hypotheses, let's get the basics down.

It's the light that was released at the moment that the first atoms formed, 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

When it formed in the early hot universe, it was mostly infrared light with a temperature of 3,000 Kelvin.

13 and 1 half billion years of cosmic expansion later, and it stretched to microwave wavelengths.

Although it's very smooth, the CMB does show lots of very tiny fluctuations in temperature.

We think that they came from random quantum fluctuations from the very first instant after the Big Bang.

These were then amplified by a period of exponential expansion in the very early universe that we call inflation.

The typical deviation from the average temperature is around 20 microkelvin, so the differences are one part in 100,000.

The cold spot, which is in the direction of the southern constellation Eridanus, is 150 microkelvin cooler than the average.

It's also huge, 10 degrees across for the coldest patch, with a less extreme halo and hot rim that's 20 degrees across.
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