Ensimmäinen sekunti - polarisaatio signaali

Kosmisen taustasäteilyn kartoitusta WMAP
punainen - kuuma, sininen - kylmä
valkoiset viivat kosmisen säteilyn polarisoitumisen suunta
kuva space.com

Lainaan tekstiä vuonna 2006 kirjoitetusta WMAP analyysin läpimurrosta Space.com sivulta

Scientists announced today new evidence supporting the theory that the infant universe expanded from subatomic to astronomical size in a fraction of a second after its birth.

The finding is based on new results from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, launched in 2001 to measure the temperature of radiant heat left over from the Big Bang, which is the theoretical beginning to the universe.

This radiation is known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and it is the oldest light in the universe.

Using WMAP data, researchers announced in 2003 that they had pieced together a very detailed snapshot of the universe as it was about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, and that they had determined things like its age, composition and development.

The previous data showed that the universe was about 13.7 billion years old. It also revealed that it wasn't until about 200 million years after the Big Bang that conditions were cool enough for the first stars to form. Scientists were also able to conclude that the universe is composed of about 4 percent real matter, about 23 percent dark matter, and about 73 percent dark energy. Nobody actually knows what dark matter or dark energy are, however.

The new WMAP observations, announced at a NASA press conference today, reveal what the universe was like in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. From the microwave background, researchers teased out a new signal called the "polarization signal."

The researchers collected observations of this polarization signal to create a map of the early universe, allowing them to test a sub-theory within the Big Bang theory, called "inflation."

"During this growth spurt, a tiny region, likely no larger than a marble, grew in a trillionth of a second to become larger than the visible universe," said WMAP researcher David Spergel, also from Princeton University.

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