Better 'baby picture' of universe emerges European Space
Agency's Planck space telescope enables new look How cute was
our universe as a baby? We now know better than ever: The
picture of our early universe just got sharper and tells
scientists with greater precision many important facts about how
the universe evolved. This new photogenic moment, released
Thursday, comes courtesy of the European Space Agency's Planck
space telescope, which detects cosmic microwave background
radiation -- the light left over from the Big Bang. Scientists
used data from Planck to create an artificially colored map of
temperature variations across the sky in the early universe, in
more detail than ever before. "It's a big deal," said Charles
Lawrence, Planck project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, in a news briefing. He added, "We can tie together a
whole range of phenomena that couldn't be tied together so well
before, and the sum total of that, the impact, is felt in many,
many ways." The light is technically fr