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Article: Findings from the cosmic microwave background. (News of the Early Universe).
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- December 21, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The most detailed snapshots so far of the infant universe are confirming that the cosmos consists mostly of mystery material, called dark energy, that accelerates the universe's expansion.
The new evidence comes from the Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR), a South Pole network of 16 detectors that probes the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiation, known as the cosmic microwave background. That radiation provides an image of what the universe looked like about 400,000 years. after the Big Bang, when photons first streamed into space.
Although the radiation has cooled to an average temperature of 2.73 kelvins, the remnant light ...