The Mystery of Cosmic Cold Spots Just Got Even Weirder

During its time in orbit, the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft gave humanity the most sophisticated measurements ever made of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the first flash of light that rippled across the universe after the Big Bang. Plank told us the shape of the universe and confirmed crucial components of the Big Bang as it collected data between 2009 and 2013. It did all that by measuring the intensity of the CMB across the sky. And since then astronomers have kept putting out new maps of the cosmos as they mine data and discover new ways to tease out secrets.