CMB tagged posts

Using known distances of 50 galaxies from Earth to refine calculations in Hubble’s constant, a research team led by a University of Oregon astronomer estimates the age of the universe at 12.6 billion years.

Approaches to date the Big Bang, which gave birth to the universe, rely on mathematics and computational modeling, using distance estimates of the oldest stars, the behavior of galaxies and the rate of the universe’s expansion. The idea is to compute how long it would take all objects to return to the beginning.

A key calculation for dating is the Hubble’s constant, named after Edwin Hubble who first calculated the universe’s expansion rate in 1929...

The map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky produced by the Planck satellite. Red represents slightly warmer regions, and blue slightly cooler regions. The Cold Spot is shown in the inset, with coordinates on the x- and y-axes, and the temperature difference in millionths of a degree in the scale at the bottom. Credit: ESA and Durham University. Click for a full size image

A supervoid is unlikely to explain a ‘Cold Spot’ in the cosmic microwave background, according to the results of a new survey, leaving room for exotic explanations like a collision between universes. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), a relic of the Big Bang, covers the whole sky. At 2.73 degrees above 0K, the CMB has some anomalies, including the Cold Spot. This feature, about 0...

LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor Ivan Agullo’s new research advances knowledge of a classical theory of electromagnetism. Credit: LSU

Discovery may impact the study of the birth of the universe. Radio waves, microwaves and even light itself are all made of electric and magnetic fields. The classical theory of electromagnetism was completed in the 1860s by James Clerk Maxwell. At the time, Maxwell’s theory was revolutionary, and provided a unified framework to understand electricity, magnetism and optics. Now, new research led by LSU Dept of Physics & Astronomy Assistant Prof. Ivan Agullo, with colleagues from Universidad de Valencia advances knowledge of this theory.

Maxwell’s theory displays a remarkable feature: it remains unaltered under the interchange of the e...

A sketch of the timeline of the holographic Universe. Time runs from left to right. The far left denotes the holographic phase and the image is blurry because space and time are not yet well defined. At the end of this phase (denoted by the black fluctuating ellipse) the Universe enters a geometric phase, which can now be described by Einstein’s equations. The cosmic microwave background was emitted about 375,000 years later. Patterns imprinted in it carry information about the very early Universe and seed the development of structures of stars and galaxies in the late time Universe (far right). Credit: Paul McFadden

A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram...