As a Whole, the Cosmos Is Beige, Scientists Say

Whoops! Call the painter back. The color of the universe is not the turquoise that astronomers said. Instead, it’s a rather ordinary beige.

Two Johns Hopkins University astronomers announced in January that they had averaged all colors from the light of 200,000 galaxies and concluded that if a human could see this combined hue, it would be a sprightly pale green. That, they said, was the color of the universe.

But Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry said that conclusion was tripped up by flawed software.

After correcting an error, “it looks like beige,” he said. “I don’t know what else to call it. I would welcome suggestions.”