# WMAP: Final Results



## Drone (Dec 21, 2012)

Finally!!!



> Since its launch in 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) space mission has revolutionized our view of the universe, establishing a cosmological model that explains a widely diverse collection of astronomical observations. Led by Johns Hopkins astrophysicist Charles L. Bennett, the WMAP science team has determined, to a high degree of accuracy and precision, not only the age of the universe, but also the density of atoms; the density of all other non-atomic matter; the epoch when the first stars started to shine; the "lumpiness" of the universe, and how that "lumpiness" depends on scale size.












In a nutshell: Scientists now know for sure that:

a) Spontaneous quantum fluctuations created our Universe 
b) There was inflation
c) The universe comprises only 4.6% atoms 
d) The universe is flat



> "It is almost miraculous, says Bennett, Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Johns Hopkins Gilman Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. "The universe encoded its autobiography in the microwave patterns we observe across the whole sky. When we decoded it, the universe revealed its history and contents. It is stunning to see everything fall into place."



Recently, Stephen Hawking commented in New Scientist that WMAP's evidence for inflation was the most exciting development in physics during his career.

NewScientist

PhysOrg

We live in an awesome time  WMAP is fantastic, nine years of observations are not wasted.


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## m1dg3t (Dec 22, 2012)

Bring on the multiverse?


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## Inceptor (Dec 22, 2012)

To me, the conclusion that the Universe is flat is the most immediately mind blowing; potentially infinite space...


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## McSteel (Dec 22, 2012)

What bugs me is that we'll probably never know which specific geometry it has, since there are 10 kinds of flat 3-manifolds...


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2012)

McSteel said:


> What bugs me is that we'll probably never know which specific geometry it has, since there are 10 kinds of flat 3-manifolds...



"flat" can also mean any other surface geometry that has a curvature smaller than the measuring accuracy of the instrument. 

"flat" (= infinite) contradicts "inflation" (= not infinite)


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## Drone (Dec 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> Bring on the multiverse?



Seems so. If there's one universe there can be many others with different laws of physics.



Inceptor said:


> To me, the conclusion that the Universe is flat is the most immediately mind blowing; potentially infinite space...



Yes it's astonishing. They said that the density of the universe exactly equals the critical density, so the geometry of the universe is flat like a sheet of paper (_where the interior angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees_). I always liked brane cosmology even though it doesn't match these new results from WMAP, the say that _the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution_.


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## m1dg3t (Dec 22, 2012)

My understanding (which is admittedly limited) was that the main thing holding back the theory of multiverses was the uncertainty of inflation, if it was "real" or not. Since inflation has been confirmed now we can postulate that the "big bang" was not an isolated occurance and may be just a small part of the overall picture. 

As space "grows" energy fills in the "emptiness", which in turn may lead to the creation of "new" universes via new "big bangs"... If I understand it correctly? Of course this is simplified 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Guth Is the main guy studying this and there are also two Russian physicists working on the theory as well but they're names escape me at this time


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## Drone (Dec 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:
			
		

> *As space "grows" energy fills in the "emptiness"*, which in turn may lead to the creation of "new" universes via new "big bangs"... If I understand it correctly? Of course this is simplified



That's correct. Space expands, entropy grows, order becomes disorder, stars fade away, black holes appear and so on. Lee Smolin thinks that every black hole contains a universe (and our universe is inside a black hole). And he implies that it's like a "living organism" and amount of black holes is some kind of "fertility" (more black holes more "baby" galaxies). Sounds crazy but anything is possible.


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## McSteel (Dec 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> "flat" can also mean any other surface geometry that has a curvature smaller than the measuring accuracy of the instrument.
> 
> "flat" (= infinite) contradicts "inflation" (= not infinite)



I don't see it that way. Inflation simply means non-linearly accelerated expansion, which does not imply non-flat expansion, and certainly does not contradict infinite space. And by geometry I don't mean surface (2D) geometry because we already know it's Euclidean. I meant the spatial (3D) geometry, which, with the Universe _appearing_ infinite, could very well be that of a Möbius Strip, for example...


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## m1dg3t (Dec 23, 2012)

S = k. log W


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## Drone (Jan 23, 2013)

Another groundbreaking finding. This time it's from CSIRO. They measured how warm the Universe was 7.2 billion years ago.



> The astronomers studied gas in an unnamed galaxy 7.2 billion ly away. The only thing keeping this gas warm is the cosmic background radiation. By chance, there is a powerful quasar, lying behind the unnamed galaxy. Radio waves from this quasar come through the gas of the foreground galaxy. As they do so, the gas molecules absorb some of the energy of the radio waves. This leaves a distinctive "fingerprint" on the radio waves. From this "fingerprint" the astronomers calculated the gas's temperature. *They found it to be 5.08 Kelvin (-267.92 degrees Celsius): extremely cold, but still warmer than today's Universe, which is at 2.73 Kelvin (-270.27 degrees Celsius).*



Brrr that's cold ...


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## NinkobEi (Jan 24, 2013)

> c) The universe comprises only 4.6% atoms



Can someone explain to me what this means? Surely it doesn't mean that matter occupies 4.6% of the universe. That seems extraordinarily high considering its size.


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## Drone (Jan 24, 2013)

NinkobEi said:
			
		

> Surely it doesn't mean that matter occupies 4.6% of the universe.



Well it means exactly that. *sigh* Didn't you watch the video in the OP? Dr. Charles L. Bennett explains that. If you're lazy then skip to ~1:20.


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## NinkobEi (Jan 24, 2013)

Drone said:


> Well it means exactly that. *sigh* Didn't you watch the video in the OP? Dr. Charles L. Bennett explains that. If you're lazy then skip to ~1:20.



Oh wow, I didn't even see the video. I'm at work and this browser doesn't pick up anything flash-related at all. So annoying. Thanks I'll check it out later!


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## Drone (Mar 21, 2013)

*Most detailed CMB map ever*








> The image is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck space telescope and is the mission's first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380 000 years old. At that time, the young Universe was filled with a hot dense soup of interacting protons, electrons and photons at about 2700ºC. When the protons and electrons joined to form hydrogen atoms, the light was set free. As the Universe has expanded, this light today has been stretched out to microwave wavelengths, equivalent to a temperature of just 2.7 K. This 'cosmic microwave background' shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities at very early times, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. According to the standard model of cosmology, the fluctuations arose immediately after the Big Bang and were stretched to cosmologically large scales during a brief period of accelerated expansion known as inflation.



However, this freshly released CMB map has brought many surprises with it:



> But because precision of Planck's map is so high, it also made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood. One of the most surprising findings is that the fluctuations in the CMB temperatures at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard model – their signals are not as strong as expected from the smaller scale structure revealed by Planck. Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look. Furthermore, a cold spot extends over a patch of sky that is much larger than expected. The asymmetry and the cold spot had already been hinted at with Planck's predecessor, NASA's WMAP mission, but were largely ignored because of lingering doubts about their cosmic origin.



Dafuq is happening  Universe is even more complex than we thought or maybe not ... Go figure



> One way to explain the anomalies is to propose that the Universe is in fact not the same in all directions on a larger scale than we can observe. In this scenario, the light rays from the CMB may have taken a more complicated route through the Universe than previously understood, resulting in some of the unusual patterns observed today.



But this is awesome anyway. Such a detailed map of CMB. It's fantastic. BTW scientists said that it implies that the age of the Universe is 13.82 billion years.


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## m1dg3t (Sep 30, 2013)

Inflation theory in "detail"...



















Drone, you still around?


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## Drone (Oct 17, 2013)

^ Thanks for those.  Yup I'm more in astrophysics and astronomy than ever before!


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## Drone (Feb 5, 2015)

A sexy massive bump:


New Planck data suggest that *reionization may have occurred approximately 550 million years after the Big Bang*, i.e., 100 million years later than WMAP had estimated.

It means that *stars may be younger than believed
*
New visualizations of the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background as detected by ESA's Planck satellite


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2015)

ESA's Planck space observatory shows the Milky Way in 4 distinct color signals that, when combined into a single mosaic, create a hypnotic view of our home galaxy.






With its microwave vision, Planck can detect more than just the cosmic microwave background [light left over from the Big Bang]. 

The *red* (upper left) shows the heat coming from dust throughout the Milky Way. The dust is extremely cold [-251C].
The *yellow* (upper right) shows carbon monoxide gas, which is concentrated in areas where new stars are being born.
The *blue* (lower right) shows light created when charged particles get caught up in the Milky Way's magnetic field. The particles accelerate to nearly the speed of light and begin to radiate.
The *green* (lower left) shows light that is created by free particles that zip past one another without quite colliding. This kind of light is often associated with hot, ionized gas near massive stars.


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## Drone (Feb 9, 2015)

New (corrected) cosmic history






And new CMB gif


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## Drone (Sep 7, 2015)

Portrayed in this image from ESA's Planck satellite are the two Magellanic Clouds. The Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160000 ly away, is the large red and orange blob close to the center of the image. The Small Magellanic Cloud, some 200000 ly from us, is the vaguely triangular-shaped object to the lower left.
In addition, a filament can also be seen stretching from the dense clouds of Chameleon, in the upper left, towards the opposite corner of the image.
This dusty filament is in fact much closer to us, only ~ 300 ly away.


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## Drone (Nov 4, 2015)

Where's @m1dg3t  ?


*Mystery bright spots could be first glimpse of another universe*

Light given off by hydrogen shortly after the big bang has left some unexplained bright patches in space. Are they evidence of bumping into another universe?

The curtain at the edge of the universe may be rippling, hinting that there's more backstage. Data from the ESA's Planck telescope could be giving us our first glimpse of another universe, with different physics, bumping up against our own.

Armed with Planck's painstaking map of the CMB – light lingering from the hot, soupy state of the early universe – Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at Planck's US data centre in California, revealed an eerie glow that could be due to *matter from a neighbouring universe leaking into ours*.

This sort of collision should be possible, according to modern cosmological theories that suggest the *universe we see is just one bubble among many*. Such a multiverse may be a consequence of cosmic inflation, the widely accepted idea that the *early universe expanded exponentially in the slimmest fraction of a second after the big bang*.

Once it starts, inflation never quite stops, so a multitude of universes becomes nearly inevitable. “I would say most versions of inflation in fact lead to eternal inflation, producing a number of pocket universes,” says Alan Guth of the MIT, an architect of the theory.

Energy hidden in empty space drives inflation, and the amount that's around could vary from place to place, so some regions would eventually settle down and stop expanding at such a manic pace. But the spots where inflation is going gangbusters would spawn inflating universes. And even areas within these new bubbles could balloon into pocket universes themselves.

Like compositions on the same theme, *each universe produced this way would be likely to have its own spin on physics*. The matter in some bubbles – the boring ones – would fly apart within 10^-40 seconds of their creation. Others would be full of particles and rules similar to ours, or even exactly like ours. *In the multiverse of eternal inflation, everything that can happen has happened – and will probably happen again.*

That notion could explain why the physical constants of our universe seem to be so exquisitely tuned to allow for galaxies, stars, planets and life.

Sadly, if they do exist, other bubbles are nigh on impossible to learn about. With the space between them and us always expanding, light is too slow to carry any information between different regions.

However, *if two bubbles started out close enough that they touched before expanding space pushed them apart forever, they could leave an imprint on each other*.

In 2007, Matthew Johnson of York University in Toronto, Canada and his PhD adviser proposed that these *clashing bubbles might show up as circular bruises on the CMB*. They were looking for cosmic dance partners that resembled our own universe, but with more of everything. That would make a collision appear as a bright, hot ring of photons.

By 2011, they were able to search for them in data from WMAP probe. But they came up empty-handed.

Now Chary thinks he may have spotted a different signature of a clash with a foreign universe.

*Instead of looking at the CMB itself, Chary subtracted a model of the CMB from Planck's picture of the entire sky. Then he took away everything else, too: the stars, gas and dust.


With our universe scrubbed away, nothing should be left except noise. But in a certain frequency range, scattered patches on the sky look far brighter than they should. If they check out, these anomalous clumps could be caused by cosmic fist-bumps: our universe colliding with another part of the multiverse.*

These patches look like they come from the era a few hundred thousand years after the big bang when electrons and protons first joined forces to create hydrogen, which emits light in a limited range of colours. We can see signs of that era, called recombination, in the light from that early hydrogen. Studying the light from recombination could be a unique signature of the matter in our universe – and potentially distinguish signs from beyond.

Since this light is normally drowned out by the glow of the CMB, recombination should have been tough for even Planck to spot. But Chary's analysis revealed _spots that were 4500 times as bright as theory predicts_.

*One exciting explanation for this is if a surplus of protons and electrons – or something a lot like them – got dumped in at the point of contact with another universe, making the light from recombination a lot brighter.* Chary's patches require the universe at the other end of the collision to have roughly 1000 times as many such particles as ours. It will be important to carry out an independent analysis and confirm this finding.

An experiment that could help might be on its way. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center plan to submit PIXIE, the Primordial Inflation Explorer, to be considered for funding at the end of 2016.






*Just right for life?*

If our universe is just one of many, that could explain why it seems so exquisitely tuned for our existence.

If dark energy, the repulsive influence hiding in empty space that speeds up the expansion of the universe, were just a little stronger, matter would be flung apart before galaxies could ever form. If it were attractive instead, the universe would collapse. But it is shockingly puny, and that's weird, unless *our universe is one of many in the multiverse*.

Compared with what we might expect from quantum theory, dark energy is 120 orders of magnitude too small. So far, no compelling explanation for that discrepancy has emerged. But if the multiverse exists, and dark energy varies from bubble to bubble, that might not seem so strange.

That's because our own universe might be an oddball compared to most bubbles. In many, dark energy would be too strong for galaxies, stars and planets to form, but not in all. “Plenty of them would have energies as small as what we observe,” says physicist Alan Guth of MIT.

That still leaves us struggling to explain why our universe is one of the special ones. Our best answer so far, Guth says, is a philosophical headache: our universe has to be special because we are alive in it. In a more average region, where dark energy is stronger, stars, planets, and life would never have evolved.

*That could mean life only exists in a sliver of the multiverse, with any conscious beings convinced their own slice of space is special, too.*



https://www.newscientist.com/articl...s-could-be-first-glimpse-of-another-universe/


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Nov 4, 2015)

So much to know, so little space left in my head.....


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## Drone (Nov 16, 2015)

Penrose rules!


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## Drone (Dec 8, 2017)

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to WMAP Science Team

Congrats!


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