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from the comes-in-colors-everywhere dept.
In 2001, some physicists put their heads together and asked: “What is the color of the Universe?”
By this they meant what color would an observer see, “if they had the Universe in a box, and could see all the light at once.”
“And,” they added, as if that question was too simple, “it wasn't moving.” They added this bit because, because of the Doppler effect, stars that are receding from Earth are redshifted – i.e. they appear redder than if they weren’t moving, relative to us.
Even though, as New Scientist observed, the question might seem about as useful as “the ‘answer’ to life, the Universe and everything given in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 42,” the astronomers knew the spectral analysis would help them trace the history of star formation. So they forged ahead with the calculations and, in January 2002, captured the public’s attention when they announced their result.
“In space no one can hear you scream, which is probably a good thing,” the Guardian wrote in their coverage, “as scientists have discovered that the universe is a shade of turquoise.”
The Guardian’s reporter might have been glib, but many others embraced the color. The real problem was, the universe isn’t turquoise. The scientists had gotten it wrong.
http://priceonomics.com/what-is-the-average-color-of-the-universe/
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:00PM
If you had all light in a box, and discounted any kind of distortions, the obvious answer (from basic physics knowledge) is white visible light, followed shortly by blindness unless you put a filter on the eyepiece.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:05PM
With even amounts of all wavelengths, you'd get white, but this being off-white, does that tell us something about what the universe is doing on a broad scale?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:41PM
Above a certain intensity, all light appears white because our eye's receptors are all saturated.
Also below another certain intensity, again all light looks white because it's too weak for our colour receptors to detect.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:56PM
All that it means is that locally, in a human sense, the mean of all light is of a cooler color than the mean of the entire universe. White, being defined as all light will vary with input.