The Mysterious ‘Cold Spot’ in our Universe Could Be a Sign of a Parallel Universe, Say Scientists

Are you familiar with the multiverse theory? It states that our universe is one of the countless parallel universes which can possibly interact with each other but have different physical laws.

Could we be living in such an infinite series of universes? This idea has fascinated scientific (and not-so-scientific) minds for quite a while.

A recent study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offers new evidence in favor of the multiverse hypothesis. British astronomers studied the so-called “Cold Spot,” one of the most mysterious places in our universe which was detected back in 2004. It is an abnormally cold region in the microwave background radiation, an electromagnetic radiation which fills all space and is basically a leftover light from the early universe.

It is considered to be the most important evidence of the Big Bang cosmological model.

As you can see in the map below, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) exhibits multiple variations of temperatures throughout the universe (red color depicts warmer areas and blue stands for cooler ones). The Cold Spot, however, has an unusually low temperature in comparison with its surroundings and the rest of the cosmos.

Credit: ESA and Durham University.

This abnormality has puzzled astrophysicists since the moment the Cold Spot was found as its existence doesn’t seem to fit any of the known cosmological models. Many researchers believe that it is nothing but a void formed as a result of the expansion of the universe, according to the Big Bang theory.

In fact, the Cold Spot is estimated to have 10,000 fewer galaxies than other regions of the universe and for this reason, it is often referred to as a “supervoid.”

However, the new study claims to disprove this idea and suggests that this enigmatic place in our universe is actually full of smaller voids which are surrounded by galaxy clusters. Moreover, these small voids wouldn’t be able to lower the temperature in the area to this extent and something else must be responsible for that.

Here is when the hypothesis of the multiverse comes into play – the authors of the study believe that the Cold Spot may have been formed as a result of a collision between our universe and a parallel universe during the early period. They think that such a collision would release enough energy to create this abnormally cold region.

“If further, more detailed, analysis of CMB [Cosmic Microwave Background] data proves this to be the case, then the Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse – and billions of other universes may exist like our own,” said Professor Tom Shanks who participated in the study.

While at the moment the multiverse remains just a theory, further study of the CMB may reveal surprising facts about our universe we had no idea about. For example, that it is not the only one and there are multiple other universes like our own.

Who knows, maybe there even is an alternate Earth with a kinder version of humans on it.

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