The First Trillionth Second of The Universe
Posted on the November 2nd, 2012 under The Universe by Aaron
Article contributed by: Mike Thomas
Data collected in 2006 from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, has given cosmologists their best evidence in support of a scenario referred to as ‘inflation’. The inflation scenario is where the universe would have rapidly grown to massive proportions within the first trillionth of a second of its existence. This particular set of evidence was collected over the course of three years by continuous observation of leftover afterglow light. This is background cosmic radiation which has hung around since the beginning of the universe almost 14 billion years ago.
NASA made an announcement in 2003, that WMAP had been able to take a very detailed image of the universe in it’s infancy by charting changes in the temperature of the afterglow. This allowed scientists to answer many unanswered queries they had about things such as the age of the universe, its composition and how it developed. Since that time the team operating the WMAP satellite has built upon that initial image and incorporated new results including the measurement of the glare from afterglow in order to learn further clues regarding the first few moments of the universe. This is where the initial seeds were sown which would lead to the creation of the stars 400 million years on.
The patterns which were detected, called a polarization signal, in the afterglow’s glare were actually the weakest cosmological signal which has ever been detected. It is around a hundredth the strength of the temperature signals collected. One of the chief WMAP investigators, Charles L Bennett of The John Hopkins University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said that there had never been anything which allowed the team to understand those early moments of the universe’s birth with this level of accuracy.
In comparing the brightness levels of broad to compact features in the afterglow, scientists can help to unravel our universe’s birth story. Think of it a little like measuring short ripples on a pond and comparing them to large waves on a lake! The very simplest inflation theories predict that the brightness will reduce as the features et smaller. The data being collected by WMAP is able to support various established theories in relation to energy and matter over the past 13.7 billion years. This allows scientists to continually build more and more accurate pictures of how our universe evolved. We were once a microscopic blip, but inflation and other events gave rise to stars, planets, and ultimately life!
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