Mar 16 2006
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(New page: Using data collected by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, scientists announced the discovery of new evidence supporting the concept known as “inflat...)
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Using data collected by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, scientists announced the discovery of new evidence supporting the concept known as “inflation.” Proposed 25 years before WMAP, inflation theory attempted to explain the distribution of matter and energy in the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of the universe. Inflation theory posits that, at the outset of the Big Bang, approximately 13.7 billion years ago, the universe underwent a rapid expansion. According to WMAP researcher David N. Spergel, “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.” The rapid inflationary expansion converted quantum fluctuations—shortlived bursts of energy at the subatomic level—into fluctuations of matter that ultimately enabled the formation of stars and galaxies. WMAP, first launched in 2001, was providing observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow light produced when the universe was less than a million years old. The first WMAP data, released in 2003, had focused on the temperature variations of this light, providing an accurate age of the universe and insights into its geometry and composition. The new WMAP observations provided not only a more detailed temperature map, but also the first full-sky map of the polarization (the way light is changed by the environment through which it passes) of the CMB.
NASA, “NASA Satellite Glimpses Universe’s First Trillionth of a Second,” news release 06-097, 16 March 2006, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_06097_first_trillionth_WMAP.html (accessed 14 September 2009); Ker Than, “Astronomers Detect First Split-Second of the Universe,” Space.com, 16 March 2006, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060316_wmap_results.html (accessed 12 July 2010); Dennis Overbye, “Astronomers Find the Earliest Signs Yet of a Violent Baby Universe,” New York Times, 17 March 2006.
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