Exquisite Cosmic Map Hints at Universe's Birth

This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected with the greatest precision yet by the Planck mission. 

The ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, was imprinted on the sky when the universe was 370,000 years old. 

It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. Image released March 21, 2013.

CREDIT: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

Charles Lawrence

"We have the best map ever of the cosmic microwave background, and that shows us what the universe was like 370,000 years after the Big Bang," said Charles Lawrence, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California who is the lead U.S. scientist on the Planck project. Lawrence and other researchers summed up the consequences of the meeting, called the Davis Cosmic Frontiers Conferences, in a call to reporters Friday (May 24).

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) was first discovered in 1964, and since then a series of experiments, culminating in Planck, have measured it in increasing detail, providing cosmologists a direct line to test theories about the beginnings of the universe.

Planck launched in 2009, and the recent data represent the product of the spacecraft's first 15.5 months of observations.

Andreas Albrecht

"Rarely in the history of science has there been such a triumphant transformation from really complete ignorance to really deep insights in just a few decades," said Andreas Albrecht, chair of the University of California, Davis Department of Physics.