Astronomers have been struck at how uniform the universe is. No matter which direction they looked, the universe seemed fundamentally the same. Recent studies of the cosmic background radiation that is the dying hiss of the Big Bang itself, however, show a lopsided cosmos-- one direction is in fact different from the other.
A team from Caltech has worked out a model of the universe that accounts for such a divergence. If their model holds, it will have the added bonus of giving insight into the time before the Big Bang, something scientists had heretofore held to be impossible.
Later this year, the ESA plans to launch its Planck probe, which will map the cosmic background radiation in unprecedented detail. If Planck confirms that the universe is not uniform, a whole new vista will open for human thought.
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