Tag: big bang

Cosmic Neutrino Background – The Oldest Light in The Universe Found

A neutrino is a neutral particle with very low mass, possibly zero. It has spin 1/2 and so is a fermion. It does not interact with the strong force or the electromagnetic force, but does interact with the weak force (and with gravity if it turns out to have mass). The cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is the universe’s background particle radiation composed of neutrinos. Like the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the CNB is a relic of the big bang, and while the CMB dates from when the universe was 380,000 years old, the CNB decoupled from matter when the universe was 2 seconds old. It is estimated that the CNB has a temperature of 1.9 kelvins or lower. Neutrinos are notoriously difficult to detect, and because the cosmic neutrinos are so cold, the CNB might never be observed directly.

A Nasa space probe measuring the oldest light in the Universe has found that cosmic neutrinos made up 10% of matter shortly after the Big Bang.

Five years of study data also shows that the first stars took over half a billion years to light up the Universe.

WMAP launched in 2001 on a mission to measure remnants of light left over from the Big Bang.

Scientists say it is collecting a “treasure trove” of information about the Universe’s age, make-up and fate.

=> Cosmic ‘treasure trove’ revealed

Biggest Dark Matter Detected

According to wikipedia, Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter of unknown composition that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. Structures larger than galaxies, as well as Big Bang cosmology, dark matter accounts for the vast majority of mass in the observable universe. Now a new giant sheets of dark matter detected:

The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light. The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form a gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space–three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy. Because the dark matter, by definition, is invisible to telescopes, the only way to detect it on such grand scales is by surveying huge numbers of distant galaxies and working out how their images, as seen from telescopes, are being weakly tweaked and distorted by any dark matter structures in intervening space.

=> Giant Sheets of Dark Matter Detected