WMAP and COBE

[NiVekeN]

Is WMAP and COBE a map of the universe? It look like a globe but with hotspots?

 

I have read that it is a map of our known universe. Is that true?

[Andromeda]

It’s a baby picture of our universe, when it wasn't very old. It’s a picture of the cosmic microwave background, of the hot spots where galaxy clusters will form. Someone else could probably elaborate on it more than that.

[iNow]

You should check out their webpage. They have a lot of really useful information and explanations:

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

 

 

The wikipedia page also has a nice bit of data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkinson_Microwave_Anisotropy_Probe

 

 

 

Finally, this is just cool.

 

 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030212.html

 

Explanation

: Analyses of a new high-resolution map of

microwave light

emitted only 380,000 years after the

Big Bang

appear to define

our universe

more precisely than ever before. The eagerly awaited results from the orbiting

Wilkinson

Microwave Anisotropy Probe

resolve several

long-standing disagreements

in

cosmology

rooted in less precise data. Specifically,

present analyses

of

above WMAP all-sky image

indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (accurate to 1 percent), composed of 73 percent

dark energy

, 23 percent

cold

dark matter

, and only 4 percent

atoms

, is currently

expanding

at the rate of 71 km/sec/

Mpc

(accurate to 5 percent), underwent episodes of rapid expansion called

inflation

, and will

expand forever

. Astronomers will likely research the

foundations

and

implications

of

these results

for years to come.

 

 

 

 

 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060323.html

 

 

Explanation

: The Universe is

expanding gradually

now. But its initial expansion was almost impossibly rapid as it likely grew from quantum scale fluctuations in a

trillionth of a second

. In fact, this

cosmological

scenario, known as

Inflation

, is now reported to be further quantified by an analysis of three years of

data from the WMAP spacecraft

. WMAP's instruments detect the

cosmic microwave background radiation

- the

afterglow light

from the early Universe. WMAP's amazing success in exploring the first trillionth of a second and favoring specific inflationary scenarios lies in its ability to make unprecedented,

precise measurements

of the properties of the microwave background. The subtle properties are distilled from conditions in the early Universe and related to its first moments of

existence

. Schematically, this diagram traces the 13.7

billion

year (plus a

trillionth

of a second ...) history of the Universe from the quantum scale to the formation of stars, galaxies, planets,

and WMAP

.

Edited August 6, 2009 by iNow

[tar]

iNOW,

 

That is great!

 

Thanks for that second diagram. I had not seen that yet.

It's absolutely wonderful. And I have an idea.

 

Pick a spot near the satellite on the disc defined by the last elipse on the right. This disc is the current minds eye universe.

Pick a spot on the disc for the location of the milky way. Now draw a line mimmicking the outside curve, all the way back to the same relative point on the elipse of the background radiation elipse. This line was the location of the milky way from the beginning to now.

Now insert a teepee with the base at the ellipse of the background radiation and the point of the teepee at the location you picked for the Milky way. Make the thickness of the skin the time between Gallileo and now. This is our field of view. The slice of the universe we see.

 

Regards, TAR

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Important correction: I think the base of the teepee has to be on an elipse at the 380,000 year mark or after, I haven't thought it out completely.

 

Regards, TAR

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Maybe a few or several billion years to the right.

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Is WMAP and COBE a map of the universe? It look like a globe but with hotspots?

 

I have read that it is a map of our known universe. Is that true?

 

I think it is a map, a picture of the edge area of the universe in all directions, and by studying the distance, redshift and age of the stuff we find there, we will be able to not only see the shape of the universe, but figure our position in it.

 

Regards, TAR

[Airbrush]

My questions about the WMAP all-sky image is what is the significance of that cold blob area near the center? It resembles the Atlantic Ocean with the Americas on the left and Europe/Africa on the right.

 

I thought the WMAP proved that the CMB was almost the same everywhere indicating that inflation had to happen. Or are the variations in temperature very tiny?

[tar]

Found some more evidence today to possibly support my hypothesis that all of space is causally linked.

 

I was doing some reading in Wikepedia, and off of links posted in this forum, testing my hypothesis against observation and theory. Was trying to see what a diagram of distance/time (two dimensions of four dimensional space were dropped for drawability) with grid lines every billion years of cosmic time and distance lines drawn the other way. I was so confused. I was supposed to measure the length of the curve of the photon crossing the grid lines at 45degree angles drawn from the quasar to the Earth and know how far the photon had traveled. I had no idea what I was allowed to hold constant and what I could vary, to study the drawing and its implications for the time period 380,000-1billion years, that am interested in investigating. And then to make thing worse, they had a curve drawn from the Earth line to the quasar line parallel to a time line. Couldn't be a photon, cause photons can't get from the Earth line to the Quasar line instantaneously, so I decided the drawing wasn't going to help me. Either they got something wrong, or I didn't understand the setup. I tell you this story because I realized later driving home, that we have a full scale, real time model to use to test any hypothesis, or idea. The universe it's self. Looking at the universe and testing the implications of our ideas strips away any errors in the frame shifting that can so easily occur when model is applied to model or formula is applied to formula. Consider how many times people have figured that we can see back in time to the big bang, or into the future if we look a little to the right. The fact is, the whole universe (if my hypothesis is correct) is here, right now for our inspection and exploration. Our past universe is no longer directly viewable, and our future universe has not happened yet. When we look through our telescope and see that quasar, and say, "that's really probably a spiral galaxy by now", we have frame shifted, and set up our minds for a paradox or two. Now we have this spiral galaxy, off to the right in our minds as a separate location in our universe, than the quasar we are looking at. Well, and I can say this with a high degree of confidence, that we see a quasar going on in that location in the universe, and if we look there tommorow we will see it still going on. Real photons from that quasar are striking our equipment. We are causally connected to that location in space. The spiral galaxy we project onto the 13.73 billion year old "current" universe does not exist for us, except in our model and our imaginations. How can the same location be both a quasar and a spiral galaxy, at the same time? It can't be. So pick. Reality, or model, but don't confuse the two. And I am sure reality will fit good models more consistantly than bad models will fit reality. Besides, if you have to twist reality into epicircles to fit your model, its probably time to question your model. We have only 13.7 billion years of light travel time to work with when we are looking at the background microwave radiation. Some of the 13.7 can be assigned to time and some can be assigned to distance due to expansion, but it HAS to add up to 13.7 billion years or less. If you think its 13.7 year old heat, cause that's how it measures, I guess it could be. But couldn't it also be billion or two billion year old objects on the edge of the universe whose light has traveled 12 billion years to get to our equipment? Wouldn't it measure the same? The black body radiation chart is the same shape as a star's. The only problem is stars are usually visible in the THz range. The background radiation is in the GHz range, 1000 times slower. Isn't the fact that we see photons from the edge of the universe evidence that we are causally connected (by photons) to the edge? And if we got causally connected to the edge at the year 1 billion or so, wouldn't that give the edge region plenty of time to expand and redshift our (the Earth's location's) view into the microwave range?

 

Regards, TAR