Energy & Particles
New ‘Big Bang’ Map Reveals Cosmos Millions of Years Older than Previously Thought
SWR Staff Writer
First Posted: Mar 21, 2013 08:49 PM EDT
Astronomers from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite released the most detailed map of the universe ever created, one that showed it to be 80 million to 100 million years older, as well as showing some interesting anomalies that scientists can't yet explain.
Their picture is a more refined look at the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, the ambient thermal radiation that's left over from the birth of the universe. Satellites were used to measure the tiny temperature fluctuations on the microwave radiation left over from when the first atoms were made, some 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This radiation bathes the whole cosmos and is an imprint of its infancy.
The picture is "is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck and is the mission's first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380,000 years old," according to a statement released by the European Space Agency.
The map results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought, and is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previous estimates. The data also show there is less dark energy and more matter, both normal and dark matter, in the universe than previously known.
Dark matter is an invisible substance that only can be seen through the effects of its gravity, while dark energy is pushing our universe apart. The nature of both remains mysterious.
"Astronomers worldwide have been on the edge of their seats waiting for this map," said Joan Centrella, Planck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These measurements are profoundly important to many areas of science, as well as future space missions," he said.
As early as 1946, theorists predicted that the big bang would leave a relic afterglow. But researchers didn't deem it detectable until 1964 - about the same time two Bell Laboratory engineers were testing an exquisitely sensitive microwave antenna for radioastronomy work.
"[Planck] also found that the cosmos is expanding a bit slower than originally thought, has a little less of that mysterious dark energy than astronomers figured and a tad more normal matter. But scientists say those are small changes in calculations about the cosmos, nothing dramatic when dealing with numbers so massive," according to the Associated Press.
" 'We've uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe,' said George Esfthathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge who announced the Planck satellite mapping. 'There's less stuff that we don't understand by a tiny amount.'"
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First Posted: Mar 21, 2013 08:49 PM EDT
Astronomers from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite released the most detailed map of the universe ever created, one that showed it to be 80 million to 100 million years older, as well as showing some interesting anomalies that scientists can't yet explain.
Their picture is a more refined look at the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, the ambient thermal radiation that's left over from the birth of the universe. Satellites were used to measure the tiny temperature fluctuations on the microwave radiation left over from when the first atoms were made, some 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This radiation bathes the whole cosmos and is an imprint of its infancy.
The picture is "is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck and is the mission's first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380,000 years old," according to a statement released by the European Space Agency.
The map results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought, and is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previous estimates. The data also show there is less dark energy and more matter, both normal and dark matter, in the universe than previously known.
Dark matter is an invisible substance that only can be seen through the effects of its gravity, while dark energy is pushing our universe apart. The nature of both remains mysterious.
"Astronomers worldwide have been on the edge of their seats waiting for this map," said Joan Centrella, Planck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These measurements are profoundly important to many areas of science, as well as future space missions," he said.
As early as 1946, theorists predicted that the big bang would leave a relic afterglow. But researchers didn't deem it detectable until 1964 - about the same time two Bell Laboratory engineers were testing an exquisitely sensitive microwave antenna for radioastronomy work.
"[Planck] also found that the cosmos is expanding a bit slower than originally thought, has a little less of that mysterious dark energy than astronomers figured and a tad more normal matter. But scientists say those are small changes in calculations about the cosmos, nothing dramatic when dealing with numbers so massive," according to the Associated Press.
" 'We've uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe,' said George Esfthathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge who announced the Planck satellite mapping. 'There's less stuff that we don't understand by a tiny amount.'"
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone