Tag Archive for 'Cosmic Microwave Background'

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

New Study Finds No Evidence of Tension in Hubble Constant

Jun 3, 2025 by News Staff

As part of the Chicago-Carnegie Hubble Program, astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have performed new measurements of the Hubble...

An image of the CMB radiation from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope; orange and blue represent more or less intense radiation. Image credit: ACT Collaboration.

Atacama Cosmology Telescope Captures Clearest Images Yet of Cosmic Microwave Background

Mar 19, 2025 by News Staff

New images from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) reveal the Universe when it was about 380,000 years old. An image of the CMB radiation from the Atacama...

Dark Energy is Misidentification of Variations in Kinetic Energy of Universe’s Expansion, Scientists Say

Dec 23, 2024 by News Staff

Dark energy — an unknown energy source that is causing our Universe’s expansion to accelerate – doesn’t actually exist, according to new research. This...

This artist’s concept shows what happened when two massive clusters of galaxies, collectively known as MACS J0018.5+1626, collided: the dark matter in the galaxy clusters (blue) sailed ahead of the associated clouds of hot gas, or normal matter (orange); both dark matter and normal matter feel the pull of gravity, but only the normal matter experiences additional effects like shocks and turbulence, which slow it down during collisions. Image credit: W.M. Keck Observatory / Adam Makarenko.

Astronomers See Decoupling of Dark and Normal Matter in Collision of Two Galaxy Clusters

Aug 1, 2024 by News Staff

The two galaxy clusters, known collectivity as MACS J0018.5+1626, each contain thousands of galaxies and are located billions of light-years away from...

This image of NGC 5468, a galaxy located some 142 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, combines data from Hubble and s Webb. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / A. Riess, JHU & STScI.

Webb Measurements Shed New Light on ‘Hubble Tension’ Mystery

Mar 12, 2024 by News Staff

When you are trying to solve one of the biggest conundrums in cosmology, you should triple check your homework. The puzzle, called the Hubble Tension,...

This artist’s concept shows the entire sky in gamma rays with magenta circles illustrating the uncertainty in the direction from which more high-energy gamma rays than average seem to be arriving. In this view, the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs across the middle of the map. The circles enclose regions with a 68% (inner) and a 95% chance of containing the origin of these gamma rays. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Fermi Spots Strange Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Feature

Jan 17, 2024 by News Staff

Intriguingly, the gamma-ray signal detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is found in a similar direction and with a nearly identical magnitude...

In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. This is known as the cosmic web. Image credit: Springel et al. / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

New Link Found between Dark Matter and Universe’s Clumpiness

Jun 14, 2023 by News Staff

New research from the University of Toronto suggests that the so-called clumpiness problem, which centers on the unexpectedly even distribution of matter...

Astronomers from the ACT Collaboration used NSF’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope to create this new map of the dark matter; the orange regions show where there is more mass; purple where there is less or none; the typical features are hundreds of millions of light years across; the whitish band shows where contaminating light from dust in our Milky Way Galaxy, measured by ESA’s Planck satellite, obscures a deeper view. Image credit: ACT Collaboration.

Astronomers Create Most Detailed Map of Dark Matter

Apr 11, 2023 by News Staff

Using data from NSF’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope, astronomers have produced the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across one quarter of the...

This image shows the Spiderweb protocluster, seen at a time when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. Image credit: ESO / Di Mascolo et al. / NASA / ESA / Hubble / H. Ford.

ALMA Detects Huge Reservoir of Hot Gas in Very Distant Galaxy Protocluster

Mar 29, 2023 by News Staff

The galaxy protocluster is question is forming around the recently-discovered Spiderweb galaxy (also known as MRC 1138-262 or PKS 1138-262), an object...

As the CMB light (left image) travels through the Universe until observed on Earth (right image), the direction in which the electromagnetic wave oscillates (orange line) is rotated by the angle β; the rotation could be caused by dark matter or dark energy interacting with the CMB light, which changes the patterns of polarization (black lines inside the images); the red and blue regions in the images show hot and cold regions of the CMB, respectively. Image credit: Y. Minami / KEK.

Astrophysicists Find Hints of Beyond-Standard-Model Physics in Universe’s Oldest Light

Nov 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe,...

As the Universe evolves, matter concentrations are surrounded by gas halos getting hotter and bigger. Image credit: D. Nelson / Illustris Collaboration.

Universe is Getting Hotter, Says New Study

Nov 10, 2020 by News Staff

The mean temperature of gas across the Universe has increased more than 10 times over the last 10 billion years and reached about 2 million Kelvin today,...

Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration Releases New 3D Map of Universe

Jul 20, 2020 by News Staff

Astrophysicists and cosmologists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have released the largest 3D map of the Universe ever created, filling in the...

This new picture of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the oldest light in the Universe, was taken by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. This covers a swath of the sky 50 times as wide as the Moon, representing a region of space 20 billion light-years across. The light, emitted just 380,000 years after the Big Bang, varies in polarization (represented here by redder or bluer colors). Image credit: ACT Collaboration.

Universe is 13.77 Billion Years Old, Astronomers Say

Jul 17, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) have taken a fresh look at the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in our Universe....

Our Universe is Curved, Suggests New Study

Nov 11, 2019 by News Staff

The current model of the Universe needs to be revised, according to a new analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy data. This artist’s...

The world’s first neutrino observation in a hydrogen bubble chamber. It was found November 13, 1970, on this photograph from the Zero Gradient Synchrotron’s 12-foot bubble chamber. The invisible neutrino strikes a proton where three particle tracks originate (lower right). The neutrino turns into a mu-meson, the long center track (extending up and left). The short track is the proton. The third track (extending down and left) is a pi-meson created by the collision. Image credit: Argonne National Laboratory.

Physicists Determine Maximum Possible Mass for Lightest Neutrino

Aug 23, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from the large scale structure of galaxies, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Type Ia supernovae, and Big Bang nucleosynthesis, a team...

An artist’s illustration showing the patterns of signals generated by primordial standard clocks in the Big Bounce theory of the primordial Universe. Image credit: Zhong-Zhi Xianyu, Xingang Chen & Avi Loeb / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

What Was Universe Like before Big Bang?

Apr 30, 2019 by News Staff

Professor Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues have proposed a new test for inflation, the theory that our Universe...

This image shows the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, with some of the brightest objects marked. Image credit: Robert Gendler / ESO.

Universe is Expanding 9% Faster than Expected, New Hubble Measurements Show

Apr 26, 2019 by News Staff

Measurements of today’s expansion rate do not match the rate that was expected based on how the Universe appeared shortly after the Big Bang over 13...

This illustration helps explain how astronomers tracked the effects of dark energy to about one billion years after the Big Bang by determining the distances to quasars, rapidly growing black holes that shine extremely brightly. Two of the most distant quasars studied are shown in Chandra images in the insets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss; X-rays – NASA / CXC / University of Florence / G. Risaliti & E. Lusso.

Dark Energy May Have Varied over Cosmic Time, New Study Suggests

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft have found evidence that an invisible force called dark...

Does Small Fraction of Dark Matter Particles Carry Electric Mini-Charge?

Jun 4, 2018 by News Staff

A duo of astrophysicists is proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the Universe: it’s possible that a small fraction...

$A visualization of the polarization of the CMB, as detected by Planck. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. A small fraction of the CMB is polarized – it vibrates in a preferred direction. This is a result of the last encounter of this light with electrons, just before starting its cosmic journey. For this reason, the polarization of the CMB retains information about the distribution of matter in the early Universe, and its pattern on the sky follows that of the tiny fluctuations observed in the temperature of the CMB. In these images, the color scale represents temperature differences in the CMB, while the texture indicates the direction of the polarized light. The patterns seen in the texture are characteristic of E-mode polarization, which is the dominant type for the CMB. The large oval shows the CMB polarization as seen by Planck on the entire sky. For the sake of illustration, both data sets have been filtered to show mostly the signal detected on scales around 5° on the sky. However, fluctuations in both the CMB temperature and polarization are present and were observed by Planck also on larger as well as smaller angular scales. To provide a taste of the fine structure of the measurement obtained by Planck, a zoomed-in view on a smaller patch of the sky, measuring 20° across, is also provided on the left. This is first shown with the same filtering as the all-sky image (upper frame), then with a different filter that shows mostly the signal detected on angles on the sky of about 20 arcminutes (lower frame). Image credit: ESA / Planck Collaboration.$

Physicists Find New Way of Exploring Cosmic Microwave Background

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

A team of Canadian physicists has developed a new way to improve our knowledge of the Big Bang by measuring radiation from its afterglow, called the cosmic...