Scientists bask in the oldest of all light, Princeton-led team measures genesis

Star Ledger ^ | 03.17.06 | KITTA MacPHERSON

[Coleus]

Among many cultures, the moment of creation is described as light coming out of the darkness. Yesterday scientists reported they had seen the first light of the cosmos, emitted a trillion-trillionth of a second after the beginning of space and time.  To spy the oldest light in the universe, the team used the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a minivan-size NASA satellite located nearly a million miles out in space, to study patterns in energy waves.

The scientists built on earlier data, using a new measurement technique that separated out ancient glare from the afterglow of creation to gain clues about the universe's first moments some 13.7 billion years ago."This is brand new territory," said Princeton University physicist Lyman Page, one of the lead researchers and a protégé of the late Princeton physicist David Wilkinson, for whom the probe is named. "We are quantifying the cosmos in a different way to open up a new window for understanding the universe in its earliest times."

The team presented the data during a news conference at Princeton University.

The work gives scientists a new microwave "map" of the universe that, to laymen, "might look very Jackson Pollock," Page conceded. It confirms the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years. And it gives researchers the historic evidence on which to calculate the precise number of atoms in the universe: 3x10µ¹, which would be written out as a 3 followed by 79 zeros.  Most important, the data provide a "smoking gun" confirming the prevailing notion of the structure of the universe, known as the inflationary model, the scientists said. The inflation scenario enlarges upon the big bang model, describing a universe in expansion.

Astronomers reacted to the news with wild enthusiasm.

[muawiyah]

No doubt many performed summersaults.

[kcar]

Was this oldest light in the universe a red light by any chance? If so I could use that for another thread.

[ConsentofGoverned]

I thought Viagra proved the inflationary model

[D-fendr]

Interesting science, thanks. And since the writer's lede waxed religious:

I don't think Genesis is capable of being fulled viewed by instruments, and..

"We are quantifying the cosmos

concerns only the very small fraction of it that can be quantified.

[Physicist]

Yesterday scientists reported they had seen the first light of the cosmos, emitted a trillion-trillionth of a second after the beginning of space and time.

They did no such thing. The universe was opaque for another 300,000 years after that event; there's no way that light would still be around for us to see.

What the MAP team has done is to measure the light from when the universe became transparent, and it allows them to place some very tight constraints on what must have happened in that first trillion-trillionth of a second.

[Republican Party Reptile]

cool story ... now, about astronomers gone wild ...