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Planck spacecraft obtains first peek of big bang’s ‘afterglow’

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 18 (ANI): European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Planck spacecraft has obtained its first peek at the afterglow of the big bang, revealing it in unprecedented detail.

The ESA spacecraft was launched into space on May 14 this year. It is observing the glow of hot gas from just 380,000 years after the big bang, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

According to a report in New Scientist, the detailed properties of this background may contain hints of hidden extra dimensions or multiple universes, as well as providing clues to what caused a brief, early period of incredibly rapid cosmic expansion.

Planck began surveying the microwave background on August 13, a few weeks after reaching its planned perch 1.5 million kilometres from Earth at a point called L2 and cooling its detectors to within 0.1 degrees Celsius above absolute zero.

Now, the Planck team has released the probe’s first image, an observational strip covering about 5 per cent of the sky.

Slight variations in temperature from place to place in the early universe give the image its mottled appearance.

“With a few per cent of the data in, you can see it’s working well and delivering good stuff,” said team member George Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge.

Planck is expected to provide the most detailed all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background yet, improving on the best current map, obtained by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which launched in 2001.

Planck’s detectors have more than 10 times the sensitivity of WMAP’s, and about 2.5 times the angular resolution.

“Every strip that Planck scans, we’re getting data that is many, many times more sensitive than WMAP,” Efstathiou told New Scientist.

Although Planck was only designed to observe the sky for 15 months, the team believes it could last for more than 30 months, based on new estimates of how long its coolant will last.

The extra time will allow Planck to measure the radiation with even greater precision, since it will scan the entire sky four times – two more than originally planned. (ANI)

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Probe to look out for gravity waves emitted 14 billion years ago

May 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 16 (ANI): A new probe is going to look for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is the afterglow of the Big Bang, that may still carry a faint signature of gravitational waves, which rippled through the very fabric of space-time nearly 14 billion years ago.

A tiny fraction of a second following the Big Bang, the universe allegedly experienced the most inflationary period it has ever known.

“During this inflationary era, space expanded faster than the speed of light. It sounds crazy, but it fits a variety of cosmological observations made in recent years,” said University of Chicago physicist Bruce Winstein.

“Theorists take it to be true, but we have to prove it,” said Winstein, the Samuel K. Allison Distinguished Service Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. “It needs a real test, and that test is whether or not gravity waves were created,” he added.

“The CMB is probably our best handle on the overall structure of the universe and how it was born,” he further added.

Winstein and his Chicago associates are part of the international QUIET (Q/U Imaging ExperimenT; the Q and U stand for radiation parameters called Stokes parameters) collaboration that has devised such a test.

QUIET’s goal is to detect remnants of the radiation emitted at the earliest moments of the universe, when gravity waves rippled through the very fabric of space-time itself.

The intensive gravitational fields that existed at these earliest moments, according to Einstein, produced gravity waves that alternatively compressed and expanded space, first in one direction, then another.

The QUIET experiment began operating last October with an antenna array that contains 19 detectors.

Since then, QUIET collaborators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California have produced 91 detectors sensitive to the radiation at a higher frequency.

Over the past several months, the Chicago collaboration has assembled and calibrated these 91 detectors in the basement of the Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Winstein’s team has tested each detector, adjusting 10 critical voltages for each to yield the best performance.

According to Winstein, correctly optimized voltages can improve detector performance by a large factor, making it possible to observe in one day what would have otherwise required a week.

This newer, more sensitive array will begin operating in June. (ANI)

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Planck satellite all set to measure the Big Bang

May 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Berlin, May 13 (ANI): Together with ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Space Telescope Herschel, Planck is all set to go into orbit on May 14, to begin its studies of the cosmic microwave radiation and of the clues it gives about the Big Bang, the earliest phases of the cosmic history, and the structure and composition of the Universe. ccording to the standard model of cosmology, our Universe began 13.7 billions years ago in a Big Bang, the origin of Space and Time.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the relic heat from this Big Bang, released 380,000 years after beginning and still traveling freely through space today.

At that early time, weak fluctuations of matter density were present, which are seen as variations of temperature in the CMB.

By observing these fluctuations, cosmologists can infer how the large-scale structure of today’s Universe – galaxies, galaxy clusters and filaments – were formed.

The Planck satellite will be placed at the second Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth-Moon system (L2), located about 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth – four times the distance to the Moon.

It will spin around its own axis, which will always point towards the Sun, with each rotation recording another strip of the sky and mapping its temperature to an accuracy of about one million of a degree.

The data are sent to Earth and turned into temperature maps of the sky in data processing centers in France and Italy.

What the maps look like depends on certain characteristics of the Universe, for example on the curvature of space.

For hypothetic Universes with specified properties, computer simulations using the MPA software generate virtual maps, which will be compared with maps of the real sky.

“From the comparison, we can draw conclusions about the structure of our own Universe, for example how much ordinary matter and dark energy exist in it,” explained Torsten Ensslin, head of the Planck group at MPA (The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics).

From their computer simulations, MPA cosmologists have shown how the CMB has influenced the gravitational field of dark matter.

The unseen structures of dark matter can therefore be deduced from temperature variations in the CMB.

The mission is expected to detect thousands of distant objects in a frequency range barely studied so far, and so to offer new insights into the physics of galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei and quasars in the submillimeter domain.

These will show Planck scientists energetic processes in the immediate vicinity of massive black holes.

Planck may also help us to understand the birth of the first stars in the Universe and the structure of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. (ANI)

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Super-sensors to measure ‘signature’ of inflationary universe

May 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 4 (ANI): Scientists have built super-sensitive microwave sensors that would help provide evidence in support of the “inflation theory” of the cosmos, which says the universe expanded rapidly from a subatomic volume.

The new detectors, built at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), were made for a potentially ground-breaking experiment by a collaboration involving NIST, Princeton University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Chicago.

This is part of a long-standing project at NIST’s Boulder campus plays a critical role in the study of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)-the faint afterglow of the Big Bang that still fills the universe.

This project previously built superconducting amplifiers and cameras for CMB experiments at the South Pole, in balloon-borne observatories, and on the Atacama Plateau in Chile.

The new experiment will begin approximately a year from now on the Chilean desert and will consist of placing a large array of powerful NIST sensors on a telescope mounted in a converted shipping container.

The detectors will look for subtle fingerprints in the CMB from primordial gravitational waves-ripples in the fabric of space-time from the violent birth of the universe more than 13 billion years ago.

Such waves are believed to have left a faint but unique imprint on the direction of the CMB’s electric field, called the “B-mode polarization.”

These waves-never before confirmed through measurements-are potentially detectable today, if sensitive enough equipment is used.

If found, these waves would be the clearest evidence yet in support of the “inflation theory,” which suggests that all of the currently observable universe expanded rapidly from a subatomic volume, leaving in its wake the telltale cosmic background of gravitational waves.

“The B-mode polarization is the most significant piece of evidence related to inflation that has yet to be observed,” said Ki Won Yoon, a NIST postdoctoral scholar.

“A detection of primordial gravitational waves through CMB polarization would go a long way toward putting the inflation theory on firm ground,” Yoon added.

The data also could provide scientists with insights into different string theory models of the universe and other “unified” theories of physics.

The new NIST detectors may also have applications closer to home, such as in reducing glare in advanced terahertz imaging systems for detecting weapons and contraband. (ANI)

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China tightens noose on press

April 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Beijing, Apr. 17 (ANI): In an attempt to tighten the noose on the Chinese media, the nation’s media watchdog has issued a circular sermonizing the responsibilities and credibility of the press.

The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has urged newspapers and organizations to verify the facts to ensure truthfulness and objectivity in their news coverage.

To facilitate it, the organizations must be strict in hiring reporters and editors. Those with a track record of fabricating news stories or seeking profit by abusing their jobs should not be employed, the circular read.

The circular also required press administrators to strengthen supervision over media organizations and news production, and punish violators with warnings, fines or suspension of businesses.

The GAPP also told the media organizations to offer employees regular training on laws, regulations and professional ethics.

Reporters should carefully verify news sources, conduct in-person interviews, and never distort facts or fabricate stories based on hearsay or imagination, the circular said.

“Editors-in-chief of newspapers carrying false reports should openly apologize to the public or even resign in accordance with the degree of damage done. The journalists concerned should also be held accountable,” Xinhua quoted the circular , as saying.

The administration had earlier named and shamed six newspapers for carrying false reports.

According to GAPP, the mass-circular Beijing Times reported last year that the China Merchants Bank (CMB) lost a book value at more than 10 billion Hong Kong dollars from Hong Kong’s Wing Lung Bank.

The report based on incorrect data collected by reporters led to the tumbling of CMB’s stock price and the fall of the entire banking stocks on that day. (ANI)

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Research and Markets: From First Light to Reionization: The End of the Dark Ages

April 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

DUBLIN, Ireland–(Business Wire)–
Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b4fea9/from_first_light_t) has
announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd’s new report “From First Light
to Reionization: The End of the Dark Ages” to their offering.

This up-to-date and concise account of a critical period of the early universe
directly links the latest theories and experiments. Targeted at cosmological
problems rather than specific methods, it begins with an introduction reviewing
the early universe and looks at why reionization is important. The process of
reionization analyzes simple analytical considerations and compares existing
observations, while a further chapter describes some of the issues regarding the
transition from Population III to Population II stars, as well as the
constraints that can be derived from WMAP. Further chapters survey the latest
numerical modeling and future perspectives for studying the dark ages using
galaxies as probes.

Written by a scientist with much experience in both research and writing, this
account is equally suitable for young researchers as well as master and PhD
students.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction: Basic review of the early Universe Why reionization is
important, what do we expect about first light. Basics about growth of
perturbations; basics about CMB

2. Reionization Description of the process of reionization of the Universe;
simple analytical considerations; comparison with existing observations

3. From Reionization to First Light This chapter describes some of the issues
regarding the transition from Population III to Population II stars as well as
the constraints that can be derived from WMAP

4. First light Description of the formation of the first structures This chapter
describes the state of the art of the numerical modeling and also some
analytical considerations

5. Probing the dark ages with galaxies This chapter highlights future
perspectives of studying the dark ages using galaxies as probes; it will discuss
future 30m grounds based telescopes, WFC3, JWST

6. Probing the dark ages using backgrounds

Appendix: Relevant formulae and results

For more information visit

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b4fea9/from_first_light_t

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Planck spacecraft obtains first peek of big bang’s ‘afterglow’

Probe to look out for gravity waves emitted 14 billion years ago

Super-sensors to measure ‘signature’ of inflationary universe

China tightens noose on press

Research and Markets: From First Light to Reionization: The End of the Dark Ages

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