Has first evidence of another universe been seen?

By William Atkins
Saturday, 24 November 2007 21:04

Science - Space

Astronomers announced in August 2007 the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Since then, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton and colleagues have claimed it is an “unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own.”

The article entitled “Astronomers Find Enormous Hole in the Universe” discusses the August 2007 discovery of the hole. It is located at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory website.

Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).

The hole is estimated to be almost one billion light-years across, where one light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.9 trillion miles) and is located within the constellation Eridanus.

The Mersini-Houghton team states that the hole is another universe at the edge of our own universe. Such an explanation, if true, would be the first experimental evidence of such an exo-universe, or a universe outside of our own universe.

Several teams of astronomers have used data from the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to make examinations of this large hole. The hole first showed up in images of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the radiation left over from the formation of the universe (what we call the big bang).

In images made by WMAP back in 2004, the volume of the hole showed up as being of a colder temperature than surrounding volumes of space because of less energy being ejected from the region.