The world of Planck

Image of the universe accurate

After the COBE satellite launched in November 1989, WMAP in June 2001, the probe Planck launched in May 2009 took over to explain the history of the Universe, with a resolution still more thinner. The universe by definition contains all that exists, including space-time, it has no "edge". Indeed, the existence of an edge implies that beyond this edge, we would not be in the universe, do we cross this boundary observable?
This limit observable is a murmur radio captured by different satellites, in the electromagnetic spectrum at 2.7 K (-270 ° C). It shows the residual fluctuations of our universe and watermark, lumps of matter that gave rise to galaxies, stars and all that we see now. It is due to electromagnetic radiation fossil or background of sky fortuitously detected by Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1965, we can see our past. Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman supported by George Gamow had predicted in 1948 the existence of radiation from the Big Bang. The cosmic background radiation is a microwave low temperature reaching the surface of the Earth from all directions of the cosmos. It is so called because it forms a background to all point radio sources that have been detected by radio telescopes. This residual radiation of the sky background has not been issued to the birth of the universe, but when the universe goes from an opaque state to a transparent state, i.e. luminous.

Before the universe is invisible, it is not composed of matter (protons and neutrons), but a soup of quarks and gluons. It is only 380,000 years after the Big Bang, as the light began to travel freely for the first time. In light of the huge fireball that followed the Big Bang is slowly cooled to become 13 billion years later, a toile of microwave background. The observable universe contains about 7 × 10²² stars, prevalent in about 10¹⁰ galaxies, themselves organized into clusters and superclusters of galaxies. The number of galaxies could be even greater. Why specialists cosmology often use the term observable universe?

NB: the Big Bang model emphasizes the existence of a phase of cosmic inflation very short but in which the universe would have grown extremely rapidly. It is from here that essential of the material particles of the universe were created at high temperature, triggering the emission of a large quantity of light, called the cosmic microwave background. This radiation is observed today with great precision by space probes.

Image: The universe of the 2000s, after the analysis of WMAP. The universe is old 13.7 billion years (with a precision of 1%), it is composed of 73% dark energy, 23% dark matter and 4% of atoms. Credit: WMAP Science Team, NASA.

Universe of Planck

Because light does not travel at an infinite speed, the observations we thus come from the past. Looking farther away, we see objects as they were in the past, to a period of increasingly close to the Big Bang. Here's the best plan ever represented the observable Universe (March 2013). This map shows the oldest lighthouse radiating our cosmic universe. It is thanks to the Planck mission that this traces the first cosmic objects, was detected with as much precision. Ancient light, called, cosmic microwave background, was printed on the card when the universe was 380,000 years old only. The image shows the tiny temperature fluctuations which correspond to regions of slightly different densities, each representing the seed of the whole structure of the future universe, ie, the stars and galaxies of today. By analyzing the patterns of light on this map, scientists have refined what we know about the universe, including its origins, the future and the basic components. Scientists have cleaned this representation, all the light emitted by the surrounding galaxies as well as by our own Milky Way. Planck has set a more precise age our universe, 13.82 billion years old, a little older than WMAP (13.75 billion years). Its composition also has been refined, it is 4.8% ordinary matter (atoms), 25.8% dark matter and 69.4% dark energy.

The huge data collected by Planck will occupy researchers for many years and certainly they will unveil more secrets about the creation of matter. On 3 July 2009, Planck has reached the L2 Lagrange point and was placed on a course called Lissajous orbit. L2 is located at 1.492 million km from the Earth away from the Sun. The satellite should rotate slower than the Earth because the solar gravitational force is weaker, but the gravitational field of the Earth tends to accelerate. To the L2 point, the object rotates around the Sun at the same angular velocity as the Earth.

NB: The first light of the observable universe seen by the Planck mission (March 2013). This picture shows the traces the first instants of creation about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Astrophysicists European, Canadian and U.S. Planck worked together to analyze the huge data stream from Planck Space Telescope. Planck observes and measures the change in temperature of the microwave background, with a much higher sensitivity, better angular resolution and a wider range of frequencies, than all previous observatories.

Image: The universe in 2013 according to the analysis PLANCK. The Universe is old 13.82 billion years, it is composed of 69.4% dark energy, 25.8% dark matter, and 4.8% of atoms. Image Credit: ESA Planck collaboration. Planck is a mission of the European Space Agency, with participation from NASA.