Evidence that answers long-standing questions about the age, composition and
evolution of the universe was gathered by scientists using NASA's
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a satellite orbiting 1 million miles from
Earth, during a 12-month observation of the entire sky.

``This picture of the early universe is a gold mine,'' Charles Bennett,
WMAP principal investigator at the Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md., said after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
released the picture Tuesday. ``The patterns in the picture tell us all kinds of
things about the universe.''

One key finding in the data is that the first generation of stars to shine in
the universe ignited much earlier than previously thought - only 200 million years
after the Big Bang, the theoretical explanation for the explosion that gave birth to
the universe.

The image shows the ``afterglow'' of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background.

Also, the new portrait pegs the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years old, with
a small 1 percent margin of error.

``We have a map of the earliest light of the universe that is complete, and it
is stunning to look at,'' Princeton physicist Lyman Page said.

``The light seen today as the cosmic microwave background has traveled for
more than 13 billion years to reach us,'' NASA said in a statement. ``Within this
light are infinitesimal patterns that mark the seeds of what later grew into clusters of galaxies and the vast structure we see all around us.''

Patterns in the afterglow of the Big Bang are frozen in place only 380,000 years after
the Big Bang, NASA said.

WMAP is the result of a partnership between the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University.

On the Net:

NASA site: http://www.nasa.gov

quote:

---

Originally posted by cragwolf:
carl, you need to show an arrow pointing to where you are in that snapshot.

---

I'm the guy not far to the left and slightly NNW of you... relatively speaking!

What are our co-ordinates in relation to this collage? Anybody?

quote:

---

Originally posted by carl:

What are our co-ordinates in relation to this collage? Anybody?

---

I'm going to guess we were pasted into this montage somewhere in the middle. You can see the familiar configuration of our local-cluster as part of the super-cluster just off-centre at a NW centre position. We're actually precariously close to that large mass of dark matter... or missing data... in the SSE centre of the photo(s).

Anyone else?

Here are some pics of different projections: http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjTbl/projTbl.html

There's not really any way to visual the "shape" of our universe. We can only imagine 3d geometries that fit within normal Euclidean 3d space, when you actually need up to 6d to get all of them, even ignoring time.

quote:

---

Originally posted by FZ:
Erm... Carl, you do realise that the picture shows a time at which earth was merely a twinkle in the universe's eye?

---

Just testing to see if anyone's listening, FZ!!!

(oh yeah, that's it!)

alis, very cool. We need a 6D map. Anybody?

quote:

---

Originally posted by CJames:
I guess I never completely understood background radiation. I get that it's basically the surface of the hubble sphere surrounding us. But how do they use this information to figure out the age of the universe, or when stars becan to form? Oh, right, right, fingerprinting like detectives, I forgot....but seriously, need more info! That's not even remotely close to satisfactory.

----------------------
I've been away for months, my physics has grown rusty...forgive me. I'm back, and I vow never to make that mistake again.

---

Good Question, CJames. I imagine the people who study the phenomenon of background radiation are using the speed of light as a constant. In doing so they are calculating how long the image of the background radiation has taken to reach us.

What isn't clear is from where is it coming and does radiation travel at the speed of light? And more questions like that. If there is an astromoner here that would help.

The "hubble sphere" is now said to be "flat".

Where have we heard this before?!!!
Any comments that might help clear up some of these questions would be appreciated. Thank you.

Yes, radiation travels at the speed of light. But how the heck can they possibly know how long it took the light to get here?

quote:

---

Originally posted by CJames:
The hubble sphere is said to be flat? Who said that? The hubble sphere is supposed to be the sphere surrounding a defined point in space with a radius the same as the distance light would have travelled since the beginning of time. That's a sphere, it can't be flat...maybe you're talking about the shape of the universe in higher dimensions?

Yes, radiation travels at the speed of light. But how the heck can they possibly know how long it took the light to get here?

---

Yes, I'd like to know that myself. There may be a correlation using the length of time light takes to reach us from a distant object. In this instance we can use that model and extrapolate it to the various waves of visible light we get from even further distances. As the head toward the red shift we are getting an age for the universe base on distance and the speed of light constant.

As for the Hubble sphere... I didn't know what that meant actually... kind of flying on the seat of my pants with that what! But... now that you have cleared it up it makes obvious sense what it is and represents.

When they say you can't fit a round peg in a square hole that sound a bit like having a sphere in a flat universe, to me. But you mention higher dimensions and that starts to make a flat universe more plausible. Super strings must be like linquini from that perspective. Linquini that has no bounds!

quote:

---

Originally posted by carl:

quote:

---

Originally posted by CJames:
The hubble sphere is said to be flat? Who said that? The hubble sphere is supposed to be the sphere surrounding a defined point in space with a radius the same as the distance light would have travelled since the beginning of time. That's a sphere, it can't be flat...maybe you're talking about the shape of the universe in higher dimensions?

Yes, radiation travels at the speed of light. But how the heck can they possibly know how long it took the light to get here?

---

Yes, I'd like to know that myself. There may be a correlation using the length of time light takes to reach us from a distant object. In this instance we can use that model and extrapolate it to the various waves and bands of visible/invisible light we get from even further distances. As they start to exhibit red shift we are getting an age for the universe based on distance and the speed of light constant.

As for the Hubble sphere... I didn't know what that meant actually... kind of flying by the seat of my pants with that what!
But... now that you have cleared it up... it makes obvious sense what it is and represents. Thank you

When they say you can't fit a round peg in a square hole that sounds a bit like having a sphere in a flat universe, to me. But you mention higher dimensions and that starts to make a flat universe more plausible.

carl

---