Discovery and Significance
In the first year of data recorded by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus was found to be cooler than the surrounding area. Subsequently, using the data gathered by WMAP over 3 years, the statistical significance of such a large, cool region was estimated. The probability of finding a deviation at least as high in Gaussian simulations was found to be 1.85%. Thus it appears unlikely, but not impossible, that the cold spot was generated by the standard mechanism of quantum fluctuations during cosmological inflation, which in most inflationary models gives rise to Gaussian statistics. The cold spot may also, as suggested in the references above, be a signal of non-Gaussian primordial fluctuations.
Recent work, however, has called into question the statistical significance of this cold spot.
Read more about this topic: CMB Cold Spot
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