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79-495: QUaD , an acronym for QUEST at DASI , was a ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiment at the South Pole . QUEST ( Q and U Extragalactic Sub-mm Telescope ) was the original name attributed to the bolometer detector instrument, while DASI is a famous CMB interferometry experiment credited with the first detection of CMB polarization. QUaD used the existing DASI mechanical infrastructure but replaced

158-431: A grey body object at a frequency ν {\displaystyle \nu } . This concept is used in radio astronomy , planetary science , materials science and climatology . The brightness temperature provides "a more physically recognizable way to describe intensity". When the electromagnetic radiation observed is thermal radiation emitted by an object simply by virtue of its temperature, then

237-454: A blackbody temperature. The radiation is remarkably uniform across the sky, very unlike the almost point-like structure of stars or clumps of stars in galaxies. The radiation is isotropic to roughly one part in 25,000: the root mean square variations are just over 100 μK, after subtracting a dipole anisotropy from the Doppler shift of the background radiation. The latter is caused by

316-417: A characteristic lumpy pattern that varies with angular scale. The distribution of the anisotropy across the sky has frequency components that can be represented by a power spectrum displaying a sequence of peaks and valleys. The peak values of this spectrum hold important information about the physical properties of the early universe: the first peak determines the overall curvature of the universe , while

395-586: A heterogeneous plasma. E-modes were first seen in 2002 by the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI). B-modes are expected to be an order of magnitude weaker than the E-modes. The former are not produced by standard scalar type perturbations, but are generated by gravitational waves during cosmic inflation shortly after the big bang. However, gravitational lensing of the stronger E-modes can also produce B-mode polarization. Detecting

474-515: A series of peaks whose angular scales ( ℓ values of the peaks) are roughly in the ratio 1 : 3 : 5 : ..., while adiabatic density perturbations produce peaks whose locations are in the ratio 1 : 2 : 3 : ... Observations are consistent with the primordial density perturbations being entirely adiabatic, providing key support for inflation, and ruling out many models of structure formation involving, for example, cosmic strings. Collisionless damping

553-635: Is flat . A number of ground-based interferometers provided measurements of the fluctuations with higher accuracy over the next three years, including the Very Small Array , Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI), and the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI). DASI made the first detection of the polarization of the CMB and the CBI provided the first E-mode polarization spectrum with compelling evidence that it

632-828: Is a function of ν {\displaystyle \nu } , and only in the case of blackbody radiation it is the same at all frequencies. The brightness temperature can be used to calculate the spectral index of a body, in the case of non-thermal radiation. The brightness temperature of a source with known spectral radiance can be expressed as: T b = h ν k ln − 1 ⁡ ( 1 + 2 h ν 3 I ν c 2 ) {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {h\nu }{k}}\ln ^{-1}\left(1+{\frac {2h\nu ^{3}}{I_{\nu }c^{2}}}\right)} When h ν ≪ k T {\displaystyle h\nu \ll kT} we can use

711-522: Is caused by two effects, when the treatment of the primordial plasma as fluid begins to break down: These effects contribute about equally to the suppression of anisotropies at small scales and give rise to the characteristic exponential damping tail seen in the very small angular scale anisotropies. The depth of the LSS refers to the fact that the decoupling of the photons and baryons does not happen instantaneously, but instead requires an appreciable fraction of

790-588: Is known quite precisely. The first-year WMAP results put the time at which P ( t ) has a maximum as 372,000 years. This is often taken as the "time" at which the CMB formed. However, to figure out how long it took the photons and baryons to decouple, we need a measure of the width of the PVF. The WMAP team finds that the PVF is greater than half of its maximal value (the "full width at half maximum", or FWHM) over an interval of 115,000 years. By this measure, decoupling took place over roughly 115,000 years, and thus when it

869-579: Is landmark evidence of the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. In the Big Bang cosmological models , during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an opaque fog of dense, hot plasma of sub-atomic particles . As the universe expanded, this plasma cooled to the point where protons and electrons combined to form neutral atoms of mostly hydrogen. Unlike the plasma, these atoms could not scatter thermal radiation by Thomson scattering , and so

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948-462: Is out of phase with the T-mode spectrum. In June 2001, NASA launched a second CMB space mission, WMAP , to make much more precise measurements of the large scale anisotropies over the full sky. WMAP used symmetric, rapid-multi-modulated scanning, rapid switching radiometers at five frequencies to minimize non-sky signal noise. The data from the mission was released in five installments, the last being

1027-425: Is related to physical origin of the polarization. Excitation of an electron by linear polarized light generates polarized light at 90 degrees to the incident direction. If the incoming radiation is isotropic, different incoming directions create polarizations that cancel out. If the incoming radiation has quadrupole anisotropy, residual polarization will be seen. Other than the temperature and polarization anisotropy,

1106-579: Is similar in design to the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) and the Very Small Array (VSA). A third space mission, the ESA (European Space Agency) Planck Surveyor , was launched in May 2009 and performed an even more detailed investigation until it was shut down in October 2013. Planck employed both HEMT radiometers and bolometer technology and measured the CMB at a smaller scale than WMAP. Its detectors were trialled in

1185-449: Is still a matter of scientific debate. It may have included starlight from the very first population of stars ( population III stars), supernovae when these first stars reached the end of their lives, or the ionizing radiation produced by the accretion disks of massive black holes. The time following the emission of the cosmic microwave background—and before the observation of the first stars—is semi-humorously referred to by cosmologists as

1264-538: Is the Planck constant ; ν {\displaystyle \nu } is frequency ; c {\displaystyle c} is the speed of light ; and k {\displaystyle k} is the Boltzmann constant . For a grey body the spectral radiance is a portion of the black body radiance, determined by the emissivity ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } . That makes

1343-401: Is the amount of energy emitted per unit surface area per unit time per unit solid angle and in the frequency range between ν {\displaystyle \nu } and ν + d ν {\displaystyle \nu +d\nu } ; T {\displaystyle T} is the temperature of the black body; h {\displaystyle h}

1422-525: The Dark Age , and is a period which is under intense study by astronomers (see 21 centimeter radiation ). Two other effects which occurred between reionization and our observations of the cosmic microwave background, and which appear to cause anisotropies, are the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect , where a cloud of high-energy electrons scatters the radiation, transferring some of its energy to the CMB photons, and

1501-462: The Rayleigh–Jeans law : I ν = 2 ν 2 k T c 2 {\displaystyle I_{\nu }={\frac {2\nu ^{2}kT}{c^{2}}}} so that the brightness temperature can be simply written as: T b = ϵ T {\displaystyle T_{b}=\epsilon T\,} In general, the brightness temperature

1580-667: The Sachs–Wolfe effect , which causes photons from the Cosmic Microwave Background to be gravitationally redshifted or blueshifted due to changing gravitational fields. The standard cosmology that includes the Big Bang "enjoys considerable popularity among the practicing cosmologists" However, there are challenges to the standard big bang framework for explaining CMB data. In particular standard cosmology requires fine-tuning of some free parameters, with different values supported by different experimental data. As an example of

1659-551: The inflaton field that caused the inflation event. Long before the formation of stars and planets, the early universe was more compact, much hotter and, starting 10 seconds after the Big Bang, filled with a uniform glow from its white-hot fog of interacting plasma of photons , electrons , and baryons . As the universe expanded , adiabatic cooling caused the energy density of the plasma to decrease until it became favorable for electrons to combine with protons , forming hydrogen atoms. This recombination event happened when

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1738-573: The peculiar velocity of the Sun relative to the comoving cosmic rest frame as it moves at 369.82 ± 0.11 km/s towards the constellation Crater near its boundary with the constellation Leo The CMB dipole and aberration at higher multipoles have been measured, consistent with galactic motion. Despite the very small degree of anisotropy in the CMB, many aspects can be measured with high precision and such measurements are critical for cosmological theories. In addition to temperature anisotropy,

1817-437: The photon – baryon plasma in the early universe. The pressure of the photons tends to erase anisotropies, whereas the gravitational attraction of the baryons, moving at speeds much slower than light, makes them tend to collapse to form overdensities. These two effects compete to create acoustic oscillations, which give the microwave background its characteristic peak structure. The peaks correspond, roughly, to resonances in which

1896-461: The two decades. The sensitivity of the new experiments improved dramatically, with a reduction in internal noise by three orders of magnitude. The primary goal of these experiments was to measure the scale of the first acoustic peak, which COBE did not have sufficient resolution to resolve. This peak corresponds to large scale density variations in the early universe that are created by gravitational instabilities, resulting in acoustical oscillations in

1975-547: The 2013 data, the universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter , 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy . On 5 February 2015, new data was released by the Planck mission, according to which the age of the universe is 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years old and the Hubble constant was measured to be 67.74 ± 0.46 (km/s)/Mpc . The cosmic microwave background radiation and the cosmological redshift -distance relation are together regarded as

2054-597: The Antarctic Viper telescope as ACBAR ( Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver ) experiment—which has produced the most precise measurements at small angular scales to date—and in the Archeops balloon telescope. On 21 March 2013, the European-led research team behind the Planck cosmology probe released the mission's all-sky map ( 565x318 jpeg , 3600x1800 jpeg ) of the cosmic microwave background. The map suggests

2133-409: The CMB as a function of redshift, z , can be shown to be proportional to the color temperature of the CMB as observed in the present day (2.725 K or 0.2348 meV): The high degree of uniformity throughout the observable universe and its faint but measured anisotropy lend strong support for the Big Bang model in general and the ΛCDM ("Lambda Cold Dark Matter") model in particular. Moreover,

2212-416: The CMB frequency spectrum is expected to feature tiny departures from the black-body law known as spectral distortions . These are also at the focus of an active research effort with the hope of a first measurement within the forthcoming decades, as they contain a wealth of information about the primordial universe and the formation of structures at late time. The CMB contains the vast majority of photons in

2291-450: The CMB is expressed in kelvin (K), the SI unit of temperature. The CMB has a thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.725 48 ± 0.000 57  K . Variations in intensity are expressed as variations in temperature. The blackbody temperature uniquely characterizes the intensity of the radiation at all wavelengths; a measured brightness temperature at any wavelength can be converted to

2370-416: The CMB should have an angular variation in polarization . The polarization at each direction in the sky has an orientation described in terms of E-mode and B-mode polarization. The E-mode signal is a factor of 10 less strong than the temperature anisotropy; it supplements the temperature data as they are correlated. The B-mode signal is even weaker but may contain additional cosmological data. The anisotropy

2449-541: The DASI interferometric array with a bolometer detector at the end of a cassegrain optical system. The mount has housed the Keck Array since 2011. This article about a specific observatory, telescope or astronomical instrument is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This physical cosmology -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cosmic microwave background The CMB

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2528-505: The Earth to another. On 20 May 1964 they made their first measurement clearly showing the presence of the microwave background, with their instrument having an excess 4.2K antenna temperature which they could not account for. After receiving a telephone call from Crawford Hill, Dicke said "Boys, we've been scooped." A meeting between the Princeton and Crawford Hill groups determined that

2607-619: The Prognoz 9 satellite (launched 1 July 1983), gave the first upper limits on the large-scale anisotropy. The other key event in the 1980s was the proposal by Alan Guth for cosmic inflation . This theory of rapid spatial expansion gave an explanation for large-scale isotropy by allowing causal connection just before the epoch of last scattering. With this and similar theories, detailed prediction encouraged larger and more ambitious experiments. The NASA Cosmic Background Explorer ( COBE ) satellite orbited Earth in 1989–1996 detected and quantified

2686-547: The Rayleigh–Jeans law: T b = I ν c 2 2 k ν 2 {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {I_{\nu }c^{2}}{2k\nu ^{2}}}} For narrowband radiation with very low relative spectral linewidth Δ ν ≪ ν {\displaystyle \Delta \nu \ll \nu } and known radiance I {\displaystyle I} we can calculate

2765-425: The actual temperature of the object will always be equal to or higher than the brightness temperature. Since the emissivity is limited by 1, the brightness temperature is a lower bound of the object’s actual temperature. For radiation emitted by a non-thermal source such as a pulsar, synchrotron, maser, or a laser, the brightness temperature may be far higher than the actual temperature of the source. In this case,

2844-417: The age of the universe up to that era. One method of quantifying how long this process took uses the photon visibility function (PVF). This function is defined so that, denoting the PVF by P ( t ), the probability that a CMB photon last scattered between time t and t + dt is given by P ( t )   dt . The maximum of the PVF (the time when it is most likely that a given CMB photon last scattered)

2923-484: The anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. The CMB spectrum has become the most precisely measured black body spectrum in nature. In the late 1940s Alpher and Herman reasoned that if there was a Big Bang, the expansion of the universe would have stretched the high-energy radiation of the very early universe into the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum , and down to a temperature of about 5 K. They were slightly off with their estimate, but they had

3002-494: The antenna temperature was indeed due to the microwave background. Penzias and Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. The interpretation of the cosmic microwave background was a controversial issue in the late 1960s. Alternative explanations included energy from within the solar system, from galaxies, from intergalactic plasma and from multiple extragalactic radio sources. Two requirements would show that

3081-408: The background radiation with intervening hot gas or gravitational potentials, which occur between the last scattering surface and the observer. The structure of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies is principally determined by two effects: acoustic oscillations and diffusion damping (also called collisionless damping or Silk damping). The acoustic oscillations arise because of a conflict in

3160-631: The best available evidence for the Big Bang event. Measurements of the CMB have made the inflationary Big Bang model the Standard Cosmological Model . The discovery of the CMB in the mid-1960s curtailed interest in alternatives such as the steady state theory . In the Big Bang model for the formation of the universe , inflationary cosmology predicts that after about 10 seconds the nascent universe underwent exponential growth that smoothed out nearly all irregularities. The remaining irregularities were caused by quantum fluctuations in

3239-633: The brightness temperature as: T b = I c 2 2 k ν 2 Δ ν {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {Ic^{2}}{2k\nu ^{2}\Delta \nu }}} Spectral radiance of black-body radiation is expressed by wavelength as: I λ = 2 h c 2 λ 5 1 e h c k T λ − 1 {\displaystyle I_{\lambda }={\frac {2hc^{2}}{\lambda ^{5}}}{\frac {1}{e^{\frac {hc}{kT\lambda }}-1}}} So,

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3318-428: The brightness temperature by the emissivity of the surface. Since the emissivity is a value between 0 and 1, the real temperature will be greater than or equal to the brightness temperature. At high frequencies (short wavelengths) and low temperatures, the conversion must proceed through Planck's law . The brightness temperature is not a temperature as ordinarily understood. It characterizes radiation, and depending on

3397-549: The brightness temperature can be calculated as: T b = h c k λ ln − 1 ⁡ ( 1 + 2 h c 2 I λ λ 5 ) {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {hc}{k\lambda }}\ln ^{-1}\left(1+{\frac {2hc^{2}}{I_{\lambda }\lambda ^{5}}}\right)} For long-wave radiation h c / λ ≪ k T {\displaystyle hc/\lambda \ll kT}

3476-429: The brightness temperature is simply a measure of the intensity of the radiation as it would be measured at the origin of that radiation. In some applications, the brightness temperature of a surface is determined by an optical measurement, for example using a pyrometer , with the intention of determining the real temperature. As detailed below, the real temperature of a surface can in some cases be calculated by dividing

3555-709: The brightness temperature is: T b = I λ λ 4 2 k c {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {I_{\lambda }\lambda ^{4}}{2kc}}} For almost monochromatic radiation, the brightness temperature can be expressed by the radiance I {\displaystyle I} and the coherence length L c {\displaystyle L_{c}} : T b = π I λ 2 L c 4 k c ln ⁡ 2 {\displaystyle T_{b}={\frac {\pi I\lambda ^{2}L_{c}}{4kc\ln {2}}}} In oceanography,

3634-439: The color temperature of the background radiation has dropped by an average factor of 1,089 due to the expansion of the universe. As the universe expands, the CMB photons are redshifted , causing them to decrease in energy. The color temperature of this radiation stays inversely proportional to a parameter that describes the relative expansion of the universe over time, known as the scale length . The color temperature T r of

3713-690: The cosmic microwave background. In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson at the Crawford Hill location of Bell Telephone Laboratories in nearby Holmdel Township, New Jersey had built a Dicke radiometer that they intended to use for radio astronomy and satellite communication experiments. The antenna was constructed in 1959 to support Project Echo —the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's passive communications satellites, which used large earth orbiting aluminized plastic balloons as reflectors to bounce radio signals from one point on

3792-458: The decoupling event is estimated to have occurred and at a point in time such that the photons from that distance have just reached observers. Most of the radiation energy in the universe is in the cosmic microwave background, making up a fraction of roughly 6 × 10 of the total density of the universe. Two of the greatest successes of the Big Bang theory are its prediction of the almost perfect black body spectrum and its detailed prediction of

3871-447: The early universe may be observable as radiation, but his candidate was cosmic rays . Richard C. Tolman showed in 1934 that expansion of the universe would cool blackbody radiation while maintaining a thermal spectrum. The cosmic microwave background was first predicted in 1948 by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman , in a correction they prepared for a paper by Alpher's PhD advisor George Gamow . Alpher and Herman were able to estimate

3950-594: The fine-tuning issue, standard cosmology cannot predict the present temperature of the relic radiation, T 0 {\displaystyle T_{0}} . This value of T 0 {\displaystyle T_{0}} is one of the best results of experimental cosmology and the steady state model can predict it. However, alternative models have their own set of problems and they have only made post-facto explanations of existing observations. Nevertheless, these alternatives have played an important historic role in providing ideas for and challenges to

4029-473: The fluctuations are coherent on angular scales that are larger than the apparent cosmological horizon at recombination. Either such coherence is acausally fine-tuned , or cosmic inflation occurred. The anisotropy , or directional dependency, of the cosmic microwave background is divided into two types: primary anisotropy, due to effects that occur at the surface of last scattering and before; and secondary anisotropy, due to effects such as interactions of

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4108-645: The large scale anisotropies at the limit of its detection capabilities. The NASA COBE mission clearly confirmed the primary anisotropy with the Differential Microwave Radiometer instrument, publishing their findings in 1992. The team received the Nobel Prize in physics for 2006 for this discovery. Inspired by the COBE results, a series of ground and balloon-based experiments measured cosmic microwave background anisotropies on smaller angular scales over

4187-455: The leading theory of cosmic structure formation, and suggested cosmic inflation was the right theory. During the 1990s, the first peak was measured with increasing sensitivity and by 2000 the BOOMERanG experiment reported that the highest power fluctuations occur at scales of approximately one degree. Together with other cosmological data, these results implied that the geometry of the universe

4266-430: The mechanism of radiation can differ considerably from the physical temperature of a radiating body (though it is theoretically possible to construct a device which will heat up by a source of radiation with some brightness temperature to the actual temperature equal to brightness temperature). Nonthermal sources can have very high brightness temperatures. In pulsars the brightness temperature can reach 10  K. For

4345-423: The microwave radiation was truly "cosmic". First, the intensity vs frequency or spectrum needed to be shown to match a thermal or blackbody source. This was accomplished by 1968 in a series of measurements of the radiation temperature at higher and lower wavelengths. Second, the radiation needed be shown to be isotropic, the same from all directions. This was also accomplished by 1970, demonstrating that this radiation

4424-508: The nine year summary. The results are broadly consistent Lambda CDM models based on 6 free parameters and fitting in to Big Bang cosmology with cosmic inflation . The Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI) was a telescope installed at the U.S. National Science Foundation 's Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica . It was a 13-element interferometer operating between 26 and 36 GHz ( Ka band ) in ten bands. The instrument

4503-434: The observable imprint that these inhomogeneities would have on the cosmic microwave background. After a lull in the 1970s caused in part by the many experimental difficulties in measuring CMB at high precision, increasingly stringent limits on the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background were set by ground-based experiments during the 1980s. RELIKT-1 , a Soviet cosmic microwave background anisotropy experiment on board

4582-417: The original B-modes signal requires analysis of the contamination caused by lensing of the relatively strong E-mode signal. Brightness temperature Brightness temperature or radiance temperature is a measure of the intensity of electromagnetic energy coming from a source. In particular, it is the temperature at which a black body would have to be in order to duplicate the observed intensity of

4661-534: The peaks give important information about the nature of the primordial density perturbations. There are two fundamental types of density perturbations called adiabatic and isocurvature . A general density perturbation is a mixture of both, and different theories that purport to explain the primordial density perturbation spectrum predict different mixtures. The CMB spectrum can distinguish between these two because these two types of perturbations produce different peak locations. Isocurvature density perturbations produce

4740-435: The photons decouple when a particular mode is at its peak amplitude. The peaks contain interesting physical signatures. The angular scale of the first peak determines the curvature of the universe (but not the topology of the universe). The next peak—ratio of the odd peaks to the even peaks—determines the reduced baryon density. The third peak can be used to get information about the dark-matter density. The locations of

4819-455: The plasma. The first peak in the anisotropy was tentatively detected by the MAT/TOCO experiment and the result was confirmed by the BOOMERanG and MAXIMA experiments. These measurements demonstrated that the geometry of the universe is approximately flat, rather than curved . They ruled out cosmic strings as a major component of cosmic structure formation and suggested cosmic inflation

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4898-744: The radiation of a helium–neon laser with a power of 1 mW, a frequency spread Δf = 1 GHz, an output aperture of 1 mm , and a beam dispersion half-angle of 0.56 mrad, the brightness temperature would be 1.5 × 10  K . For a black body , Planck's law gives: I ν = 2 h ν 3 c 2 1 e h ν k T − 1 {\displaystyle I_{\nu }={\frac {2h\nu ^{3}}{c^{2}}}{\frac {1}{e^{\frac {h\nu }{kT}}-1}}} where I ν {\displaystyle I_{\nu }} (the Intensity or Brightness)

4977-552: The reciprocal of the brightness temperature: T b − 1 = k h ν ln [ 1 + e h ν k T − 1 ϵ ] {\displaystyle T_{b}^{-1}={\frac {k}{h\nu }}\,{\text{ln}}\left[1+{\frac {e^{\frac {h\nu }{kT}}-1}{\epsilon }}\right]} At low frequency and high temperatures, when h ν ≪ k T {\displaystyle h\nu \ll kT} , we can use

5056-431: The right idea. They predicted the CMB. It took another 15 years for Penzias and Wilson to discover that the microwave background was actually there. According to standard cosmology, the CMB gives a snapshot of the hot early universe at the point in time when the temperature dropped enough to allow electrons and protons to form hydrogen atoms. This event made the universe nearly transparent to radiation because light

5135-403: The second and third peak detail the density of normal matter and so-called dark matter , respectively. Extracting fine details from the CMB data can be challenging, since the emission has undergone modification by foreground features such as galaxy clusters . The cosmic microwave background radiation is an emission of uniform black body thermal energy coming from all directions. Intensity of

5214-425: The standard explanation. The cosmic microwave background is polarized at the level of a few microkelvin. There are two types of polarization, called E-mode (or gradient-mode) and B-mode (or curl mode). This is in analogy to electrostatics , in which the electric field ( E -field) has a vanishing curl and the magnetic field ( B -field) has a vanishing divergence . The E-modes arise from Thomson scattering in

5293-413: The temperature of the cosmic microwave background to be 5 K. The first published recognition of the CMB radiation as a detectable phenomenon appeared in a brief paper by Soviet astrophysicists A. G. Doroshkevich and Igor Novikov , in the spring of 1964. In 1964, David Todd Wilkinson and Peter Roll, Dicke's colleagues at Princeton University , began constructing a Dicke radiometer to measure

5372-444: The temperature was around 3000 K or when the universe was approximately 379,000 years old. As photons did not interact with these electrically neutral atoms, the former began to travel freely through space, resulting in the decoupling of matter and radiation. The color temperature of the ensemble of decoupled photons has continued to diminish ever since; now down to 2.7260 ± 0.0013 K , it will continue to drop as

5451-408: The time of decoupling. The CMB is not completely smooth and uniform, showing a faint anisotropy that can be mapped by sensitive detectors. Ground and space-based experiments such as COBE , WMAP and Planck have been used to measure these temperature inhomogeneities. The anisotropy structure is determined by various interactions of matter and photons up to the point of decoupling, which results in

5530-418: The universe became transparent. Known as the recombination epoch, this decoupling event released photons to travel freely through space. However, the photons have grown less energetic due to the cosmological redshift associated with the expansion of the universe . The surface of last scattering refers to a shell at the right distance in space so photons are now received that were originally emitted at

5609-433: The universe by a factor of 400 to 1; the number density of photons in the CMB is one billion times (10 ) the number density of matter in the universe. Without the expansion of the universe to cause the cooling of the CMB, the night sky would shine as brightly as the Sun. The energy density of the CMB is 0.260 eV/cm (4.17 × 10  J/m ), about 411 photons/cm . In 1931, Georges Lemaître speculated that remnants of

5688-407: The universe expands. The intensity of the radiation corresponds to black-body radiation at 2.726 K because red-shifted black-body radiation is just like black-body radiation at a lower temperature. According to the Big Bang model, the radiation from the sky we measure today comes from a spherical surface called the surface of last scattering . This represents the set of locations in space at which

5767-441: The universe is slightly older than researchers expected. According to the map, subtle fluctuations in temperature were imprinted on the deep sky when the cosmos was about 370 000 years old. The imprint reflects ripples that arose as early, in the existence of the universe, as the first nonillionth (10 ) of a second. Apparently, these ripples gave rise to the present vast cosmic web of galaxy clusters and dark matter . Based on

5846-544: The volume of the intergalactic medium (IGM) consists of ionized material (since there are few absorption lines due to hydrogen atoms). This implies a period of reionization during which some of the material of the universe was broken into hydrogen ions. The CMB photons are scattered by free charges such as electrons that are not bound in atoms. In an ionized universe, such charged particles have been liberated from neutral atoms by ionizing (ultraviolet) radiation. Today these free charges are at sufficiently low density in most of

5925-569: The volume of the universe that they do not measurably affect the CMB. However, if the IGM was ionized at very early times when the universe was still denser, then there are two main effects on the CMB: Both of these effects have been observed by the WMAP spacecraft, providing evidence that the universe was ionized at very early times, at a redshift around 10. The detailed provenance of this early ionizing radiation

6004-470: Was complete, the universe was roughly 487,000 years old. Since the CMB came into existence, it has apparently been modified by several subsequent physical processes, which are collectively referred to as late-time anisotropy, or secondary anisotropy. When the CMB photons became free to travel unimpeded, ordinary matter in the universe was mostly in the form of neutral hydrogen and helium atoms. However, observations of galaxies today seem to indicate that most of

6083-440: Was no longer being scattered off free electrons. When this occurred some 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe was about 3,000 K. This corresponds to an ambient energy of about 0.26  eV , which is much less than the 13.6 eV ionization energy of hydrogen. This epoch is generally known as the "time of last scattering" or the period of recombination or decoupling . Since decoupling,

6162-475: Was the right theory of structure formation. Inspired by the initial COBE results of an extremely isotropic and homogeneous background, a series of ground- and balloon-based experiments quantified CMB anisotropies on smaller angular scales over the next decade. The primary goal of these experiments was to measure the angular scale of the first acoustic peak, for which COBE did not have sufficient resolution. These measurements were able to rule out cosmic strings as

6241-428: Was truly cosmic in origin. In the 1970s numerous studies showed that tiny deviations from isotropy in the CMB could result from events in the early universe. Harrison, Peebles and Yu, and Zel'dovich realized that the early universe would require quantum inhomogeneities that would result in temperature anisotropy at the level of 10 or 10 . Rashid Sunyaev , using the alternative name relic radiation , calculated

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