Much coverage of astronomy functions as an excuse for colorful images. But sometimes you can get away with both interesting science and colorful images, as The Guardian demonstrates and covers in greater depth on their website.

Astronomers have re-inquired into a somewhat remarkable Cold Spot in the universe that could be the largest individual structure human science has ever characterized. The spherical pocket, a void in the Cosmic Background Radiation profile, is 1.8 billion light years across. 

The new study, led by István Szapudi of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, suggests a tentative explanation for this relatively vacuous part of our universe. It suggests that the Cold Spot could be accounted for by a smaller (but still colassal) area of emptiness in the center of the Spot, which would sap energy form light as it, the light, sped through it.

But the Cold Spot itself was originally discovered ten years ago, and since has brought challenging questions to current cosmological theory.



Image Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration