THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION&the WMAP

THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION

WHAT IS IT?
It is radiation left over from the Big Bang; by studying this afterglow of our birth, we can find important answers to questions regarding the age and make up of our universe.

HOW CAN WE STUDY THIS COSMIC AFTERGLOW?
The WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe), a spacecraft launched by NASA in 2001.

WMAP AND ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

1. Determined the universe to be 13.77 billion years old to within a half percent.

2. Nailed down the curvature of space to within 0.4% of "flat" Euclidean.

3. Determined that ordinary atoms (also called baryons) make up only 4.6% of the universe.

4. Completed a census of the universe and finds that dark matter (matter not made up of atoms) is 24.0%

5. Determined that dark energy, in the form of a cosmological constant, makes up 71.4% of the universe, causing the expansion rate of the universe to speed up. 

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov

Awesomeness wink emoticon...