Unusual: the universe is actually the color of coffee with milk

when we imagine the universe we can’t avoid putting it on dark background like the night with little flashes of stars Or the galaxies themselves where the colors purple, red, green and until turquoise. However, a group of astronomersits determined that the true “king” in space is the “coffee with milk”, as if we average all the light, that is to say let’s divide the matter in equal parts – break with everything paradigm studied to date and shows us an image that has nothing to do with what National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in his stunning images.

How was the first time a human left the planet?

A Wednesday, April 12, 1961, the operations center of the ambitious Soviet space program in Bajkonur, put – for the first time – a human being in orbit. this rocket It was historic and was under the direction of the air force commander Soviet Yuri Gagarin. This man with bright blue eyes was not chosen nor for his special information, nor for his physical layout, It should be noted that they are important when sending a person into space. However, the defining characteristic to carry out this mission was its height.

Yuri Gagarin had to adapt in the sardine box Was the space capsule. Finally, when he was in orbit around the Earth, this astronaut looked down the hatch and wrote in his book from the logbook: “The Earth is beautiful. I see it surrounded by a bluish halo, and letting my gaze wander in the sky I see it go from blue to turquoise, from this one to purple and the darkness of the night.” The Soviet cosmonaut and pilot hardly thought that 50 years later two American astronomers were going to describe in the same way asset the universe.

Describing the color of the ocean is also complicated

In a first test, they wanted to practice this exercise with the sea, the scientists wondered what the color was the ocean. According Karl Glazebrook, only with Ivan Baldry of the Johns Hopkins University, are those who wanted to know what it was “the color of the universe”, the water of our planet is “fairly close to the pale turquoise standard, although it has some percentage of green”, Or at least that’s how he described it. 2002. Although it is only in our eyes for what lies between medium aquamarine and the pale turquoise it is only a reflection.

To find out what was happening in space, they used the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, a program of observation moreover 200 thousand galaxies distributed from two to three billion of light years. with this tool astronomers they built what they called The cosmic spectrum, which represents all the energy emitted by these galaxies in each light spectrum color visible. So taking into account light intensity of each of these cosmic elements, pale turquoise would be the color we would see if we mix all the light in the universe It wasn’t a strange outcome, in fact, it brought back dark memories of a home we left long ago, as it looked like the ocean we emerged from long ago. 600 million years old.

Determining the color of the cosmos is as complicated as that of the ocean

This is why if we choose a “predominant” in our universe, the answer will come to light with that of the sea. And it is only against what one might think, the ocean is blue most of the time. anyone who has been sitting on a beach you will know that you also have greenish tints and can even discover purple or the creepy. That’s why the color of the sea East indefinable. However, something curious comes out of all this and that is that, as that we observe with a more vertical angle, blue becomes more intense. That would explain why from the window from an airplane we see it in a very pure blue. Indeed, with the surface vague the same thing happens, well areas with waves are from a much more accentuated blue.

Who gives color to the ocean is the sky

Thanks to Science We discovered that what gives color to the sea is the sky. In fact, the image of a Rainbow uniting the ocean with our atmosphere is a memory metaphorical and corny about it. So if the earth’s water has that smell because it is a reflection of the sky, the surface of the sea is a sample of the scattered light by the atmosphere. This gives you its characteristic color. To all this must be added the fact that water absorbs more red color What blue and who scatters more blue than red. Clear, the combination of the two phenomena —as well as the mud, algae and oils it contains in suspension— They help create that indefinite color, close turquoise, What owns the sea

There are no green stars and there is nothing turquoise in the universe

The scientists finally clarified that the universe has a tone amazing greenish blue, but they pointed out that there is no green stars. Instead, what is considered most abundant in the universe is old red stars And young bruises, what a flood the cosmos of blue-green light. This -although it may seem strange- in our school days we used to have green mixing blue with yellow. But there is nothing extraordinary about it. Actually, The mixture of colors is different if we use the light For if we use oil So the colors we see in our television or on the computer screen, are obtained from the three primaries, which are red, green and blue. In fact, this technology has received the name of RGB, the acronyms in English of those three colours.

We understand here that the poetic turquoise did not live long in the cosmos because the following year the researchers corrected their analysis and reported that they had been wrong. Because the color of the universe is a slightly beige white. In short, what pretty light blue that we had, we passed the color of coffee with milk. In fact, if you want to see what it’s all about, this is the key to the color space RGB: R=255, G=248 and B=231. We know well that the name they gave it is not very attractive, since the color “cosmic latte or cosmic latte” It doesn’t sound so poetic and mystical, but it’s worse to call it alone “beige”.

How did they manage to get this tone?

The astronomers of johns hopkins collected light from over 200 thousand galaxies and they averaged it. That means they split the stellar sets into representative fractions, which in the To land This would mean that we take some of all the paint cans and mix them into a container. After carefully removing its contents, it is “income” A glass jar and the sample was taken. He medium color of all those “paint cans are” —to a good approximation— “the color of the universe”. Although we must clarify that throughout history it has not been the predominant one. As sometimes it’s becoming fashionable blue or yellow the very evolution of the stars – which are the paint cans of the universe – has defined the cosmos mode.

In fact, when the universe was young and they appeared the first stars, blue was the dominant color. Little by little the stars they were getting old and become red giants. this new light flooded the sky And blue it was done every time more greenish Finally the pace of training young stars, who contribute with their turquoise light, has declined rapidly in recent six billion years due to the shortage of raw material with which they are built, what are they interstellar gas.

If this continues, the stellar population of the universe it will age in a process similar to what happens with the European population. Afterwards the light he will leave gradually blushing until there comes a day when astronomers from a distance galaxy They will discover that there was a time where the color of the universe was a “coffee with milk” but at this time it is reddish. Here we will know that our universe will have aged.