The glow is almost but not quite uniform in all directions, and shows a very specific pattern equal to that expected if the inherent randomness of a red-hot gas is blown up to the size of the universe. In particular, the spatial power spectrum (how much difference is observed versus how far apart the regions are on the sky) contains small anisotropies, or irregularities, which vary with the size of the region examined. They have been measured in detail, and match to within experimental error what would be expected if small thermal fluctuations had expanded to the size of the observable space we can detect today.