Cosmic latte

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Cosmic Latte is the color of the universe, according to a team of astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. In 2001, Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry determined that the color of the universe was a greenish white, but they soon corrected their analysis in "The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: constraints on cosmic star-formation history from the cosmic spectrum", published in 2002. In this paper, they reported that their survey of the color of all light in the universe added up to a slightly beige white. The survey included more than 200,000 galaxies, and measured the spectral range of the light from a large volume of the universe. The hexadecimal RGB value for Cosmic Latte is #FFF8E7.

In a Washington Post article, the color was displayed. Glazebrook jokingly said that he was looking for suggestions for a name for the new color. Several people who read the article sent in suggestions. These were the results of a vote of the scientists involved based on the new color.

The original and incorrect color thought to describe the universe was "cosmic turquoise" due to an error in the way that a free piece of software which was downloaded from the internet calculated the shade.[1]

Though Drum's suggestion "Cappuccino Cosmico" received the most votes, Glazebrook and Baldry preferred Drum's other suggestion (Cosmic Latte). Drum came up with the name while sitting at a Starbucks coffee house drinking a latte and reading the Post. Drum noticed that the color of the Universe as displayed in the Washington Post was the same color as his latte.

But the side development of the "color of the universe" was really only an interesting point on the road of the actual study. The real point of the study was to reveal the detail that spectral analysis of different galaxies could tell Glazebrook and Baldry about the history of star formation. Like Fraunhofer lines, the dark lines displayed in the study's spectral ranges display older and younger stars and allow Glazebrook and Baldry to determine the age of different galaxies and star systems. What the study revealed is that the overwhelming majority of stars formed about 5 billion years ago. Because these stars would have been "brighter" in the past, the color of the universe changes over time shifting from blue to red as more blue stars change to yellow and eventually red giants. These too will eventually change into black holes.

Glazebrook's and Baldry's work was funded by the David & Lucille Packard Foundation.

[edit] External links

• The Cosmic Spectrum Official project website