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September 25, 2006

Universe in a Sphere

Universe in a Sphere

Our entire observable universe is inside this sphere, with a radius 13.3 billion light years, with us at the center. Space continues outside the sphere, but an opaque glowing wall of hydrogen plasma hides it from our view. This is our best image so far of what this plasma sphere looks like after cleaning out Galactic radio noise from the WMAP satellite observations.

This image is from Phys. Rev. D, 68, 123525, supported by National Science Foundation grants AST 00-71213, AST 01-34999 and AST 02-05981. (Date of Image: March 4, 2003)

Credit: Credit Max Tegmark, Angelica de Oliveira-Costa, and Andrew Hamilton


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