“The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to -271.3°C, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.” –Stephen Hawking
Imagine you traveled out into empty space. Away from any and all planets, stars, galaxies, and matter in general: normal or dark. Would you simply find yourself immersed in an empty, energy-free abyss? Not so! You’d still be bathed in radiation: not just from distant starlight, but from the afterglow of the Big Bang itself.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration.
That’s the cosmic microwave background. What you might not realize is that all by itself, it tells us what the Universe is made out of today. Not only that, but there are anomalies in the radiation itself. Does that mean new physics is present? Or are the anomalies not so anomalous after all?
Image credit: Randall Munroe / xkcd, via https://xkcd.com/882/.
Come find out, and get the science of the cosmic microwave background!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1T8KQ4j
“The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to -271.3°C, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.” –Stephen Hawking
Imagine you traveled out into empty space. Away from any and all planets, stars, galaxies, and matter in general: normal or dark. Would you simply find yourself immersed in an empty, energy-free abyss? Not so! You’d still be bathed in radiation: not just from distant starlight, but from the afterglow of the Big Bang itself.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration.
That’s the cosmic microwave background. What you might not realize is that all by itself, it tells us what the Universe is made out of today. Not only that, but there are anomalies in the radiation itself. Does that mean new physics is present? Or are the anomalies not so anomalous after all?
Image credit: Randall Munroe / xkcd, via https://xkcd.com/882/.
Come find out, and get the science of the cosmic microwave background!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1T8KQ4j
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