Physics

https://www.britannica.com/science/cosmic-microwave-background

cosmic microwave background (CMB), electromagnetic radiation filling the universe that is a residual effect of the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. Because the expanding universe has cooled since this primordial explosion, the background radiation is in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Discovery of the cosmic background

Beginning in 1948, the American cosmologist George Gamow and his coworkers, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, investigated the idea that the chemical elements might have been synthesized by thermonuclear reactions that took place in a primeval fireball. According to their calculations, the high temperature associated with the early universe would have given rise to a thermal radiation field, which has a unique distribution of intensity with wavelength (known as Planck’s radiation law), that is a function only of the temperature. As the universe expanded, the temperature would have dropped, each photon being redshifted by the cosmological expansion to longer wavelength, as the American physicist Richard C. Tolman had already shown in 1934. By the present epoch the radiation temperature would have dropped to very low values, about 5 kelvins above absolute zero (0 kelvin [K], or −273 °C [−460 °F]) according to the estimates of Alpher and Herman.

Interest in these calculations waned among most astronomers when it became apparent that the lion’s share of the synthesis of elements heavier than helium must have occurred inside stars rather than in a hot big bang. In the early 1960s physicists at Princeton University, New Jersey, as well as in the Soviet Union, took up the problem again and began to build a microwave receiver that might detect, in the words of the Belgian cleric and cosmologist Georges Lemaître, “the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds.”

The actual discovery of the relict radiation from the primeval fireball, however, occurred by accident. In experiments conducted in connection with the first Telstar communication satellite, two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey, measured excess radio noise that seemed to come from the sky in a completely isotropic fashion (that is, the radio noise was the same in every direction). When they consulted Bernard Burke of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, about the problem, Burke realized that Penzias and Wilson had most likely found the cosmic background radiation that Robert H. Dicke, P.J.E. Peebles, and their colleagues at Princeton were planning to search for. Put in touch with one another, the two groups published simultaneously in 1965 papers detailing the prediction and discovery of a universal thermal radiation field with a temperature of about 3 K. Nicolaus Copernicus. Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish astronomer. In 1543 he published, forward proof of a Heliocentric (sun centered) universe. Coloured stipple engraving published London 1802. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi. Britannica Quiz All About Astronomy

Precise measurements made by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite launched in 1989 determined the spectrum to be exactly characteristic of a blackbody at 2.735 K. The velocity of the satellite about Earth, Earth about the Sun, the Sun about the Galaxy, and the Galaxy through the universe actually makes the temperature seem slightly hotter (by about one part in 1,000) in the direction of motion rather than away from it. The magnitude of this effect—the so-called dipole anisotropy—allows astronomers to determine that the Local Group (the group of galaxies containing the Milky Way Galaxy) is moving at a speed of about 600 km per second (km/s; 400 miles per second [miles/s]) in a direction that is 45° from the direction of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Such motion is not measured relative to the galaxies themselves (the Virgo galaxies have an average velocity of recession of about 1,000 km/s [600 miles/s] with respect to the Milky Way system) but relative to a local frame of reference in which the cosmic microwave background radiation would appear as a perfect Planck spectrum with a single radiation temperature.

The COBE satellite carried instrumentation aboard that allowed it to measure small fluctuations in intensity of the background radiation that would be the beginning of structure (i.e., galaxies and clusters of galaxies) in the universe. The satellite transmitted an intensity pattern in angular projection at a wavelength of 0.57 cm after the subtraction of a uniform background at a temperature of 2.735 K. Bright regions at the upper right and dark regions at the lower left showed the dipole asymmetry. A bright strip across the middle represented excess thermal emission from the Milky Way. To obtain the fluctuations on smaller angular scales, it was necessary to subtract both the dipole and the galactic contributions. An image was obtained showing the final product after the subtraction. Patches of light and dark represented temperature fluctuations that amount to about one part in 100,000—not much higher than the accuracy of the measurements. Nevertheless, the statistics of the distribution of angular fluctuations appeared different from random noise, and so the members of the COBE investigative team found the first evidence for the departure from exact isotropy that theoretical cosmologists long predicted must be there in order for galaxies and clusters of galaxies to condense from an otherwise structureless universe. These fluctuations correspond to distance scales on the order of 109 light-years across (still larger than the largest material structures seen in the universe, such as the enormous grouping of galaxies dubbed the “Great Wall”). Students save 67%! Learn more about our special academic rate today. Know about the Millennium Simulation at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and learn how to simulate the universe on a personal computer Know about the Millennium Simulation at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and learn how to simulate the universe on a personal computer An overview of the Millennium Simulation run by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, followed by a tutorial on how to simulate the universe on a home computer. See all videos for this article

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was launched in 2001 to observe the fluctuations seen by COBE in greater detail and with more sensitivity. The conditions at the beginning of the universe left their imprint on the size of the fluctuations. WMAP’s accurate measurements showed that the early universe was 63 percent dark matter, 15 percent photons, 12 percent atoms, and 10 percent neutrinos. Today the universe is 72.6 percent dark energy, 22.8 percent dark matter, and 4.6 percent atoms. Although neutrinos are now a negligible component of the universe, they form their own cosmic background, which was discovered by WMAP. WMAP also showed that the first stars in the universe formed half a billion years after the big bang. Isotropy in the cosmic background

Apart from the small fluctuations discussed above (one part in 100,000), the observed cosmic microwave background radiation exhibits a high degree of isotropy, a zeroth order fact that presents both satisfaction and difficulty for a comprehensive theory. On the one hand, it provides a strong justification for the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy that is common to most cosmological models. On the other hand, such homogeneity and isotropy are difficult to explain because of the “light-horizon” problem. In the context of the cosmic microwave background, the problem can be expressed as follows. Consider the background radiation coming to an observer from any two opposite sides of the sky. Clearly, whatever are the ultimate sources (hot plasma) of this radiation, the photons, traveling at the speed of light since their emission by the plasma, have only had time to reach Earth now. The matter on one side of the sky could not have had time to have “communicated” with the matter on the other side (they are beyond each other’s light horizon), so how is it possible (with respect to an observer in the right rest frame) that they “know” to have the same temperature to a precision approaching one part in 100,000? What accounts for the high degree of angular isotropy of the cosmic microwave background?

A mechanism called “inflation” offers an attractive way out of this dilemma. The basic idea is that at high energies, matter is better described by fields than by classical means. The contribution of a field to the energy density (and therefore the mass density) and the pressure of the vacuum state need not have been zero in the past, even if it is today. During the time of superunification (Planck era, 10−43 second) or grand unification (GUT era, 10−35 second), the lowest-energy state for this field may have corresponded to a “false vacuum,” with a combination of mass density and negative pressure that results gravitationally in a large repulsive force. In the context of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the false vacuum may be thought of alternatively as contributing a cosmological constant about 10100 times larger than it can possibly be today. The corresponding repulsive force causes the universe to inflate exponentially, doubling its size roughly once every 10−43 or 10−35 second. After at least 85 doublings, the temperature, which started out at 1032 or 1028 K, would have dropped to very low values near absolute zero.

Inflation provides a mechanism for understanding the overall isotropy of the cosmic microwave background because the matter and radiation of the entire observable universe were in good thermal contact (within the cosmic event horizon) before inflation and therefore acquired the same thermodynamic characteristics. Rapid inflation carried different portions outside their individual event horizons. When inflation ended and the universe reheated and resumed normal expansion, these different portions, through the natural passage of time, reappeared on our horizon. Through the observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background, they are inferred still to have the same temperatures. Understand how the polarization of the light from cosmic background radiation influenced the early development of the universe Understand how the polarization of the light from cosmic background radiation influenced the early development of the universe How the polarization of light influenced the birth of the universe. See all videos for this article

Given the measured radiation temperature of 2.735 K, the energy density of the cosmic microwave background can be shown to be about 1,000 times smaller than the average rest-energy density of ordinary matter in the universe. Thus, the current universe is matter-dominated. If one goes back in time to redshift z, the average number densities of particles and photons were both bigger by the same factor (1 + z)3 because the universe was more compressed by this factor, and the ratio of these two numbers would have maintained its current value of about one hydrogen nucleus, or proton, for every 109 photons. The wavelength of each photon, however, was shorter by the factor 1 + z in the past than it is now; therefore, the energy density of radiation increases faster by one factor of 1 + z than the rest-energy density of matter. Thus, the radiation energy density becomes comparable to the energy density of ordinary matter at a redshift of about 1,000. At redshifts larger than 10,000, radiation would have dominated even over the dark matter of the universe. Between these two values, at a redshift of about 1,090, radiation would have decoupled from matter when hydrogen recombined. It is not possible to use photons to observe redshifts larger than this, because the cosmic plasma at temperatures above 4,000 K is essentially opaque before recombination. These photons from a redshift of 1,090 form the cosmic microwave background.