Apr 29 2001
From The Space Library
At the American Physical Society Spring Meeting, a team of cosmologists announced that they had discovered the “music of creation,” using an extremely sensitive microwave telescope. The researchers presented their discovery of the sound waves that had rippled through the universe some 14 billion years ago. The team of the Balloon Observation of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics (BOOMERANG) project had gathered the data from a telescope aboard a balloon, which circumnavigated Antarctica at an altitude of 23 miles (37 kilometers). According to Team Leader Paolo deBernardis, the beginning of the universe left behind a residue of light and sound, providing scientists with hints about the details of the Big Bang: “The early universe is full of sound waves compressing and rarefying matter and light, much like sound waves compress and rarefy air inside a flute or trumpet.” The BOOMERANG team’s findings provided a new means of examining the early universe and new evidence to use in calculating how it changed. Scientists praised the discoveries as “stunning and humbling” evidence that cosmologists were using the correct model to describe the early universe. (NASA, “New Boomerang Findings Reveal ‘Music’ of the Early Universe,” news release 01-87, 29 April 2001; Kathy Sawyer, “Astronomy Peers into Face of Infant Universe,” Washington Post, 30 April 2001.)
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