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Nancy Neal
Headquarters, Washington               February 11, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-2369)

Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-5017)

RELEASE: 03-064

NASA RELEASES STUNNING IMAGES OF OUR INFANT UNIVERSE

     NASA today released the best "baby picture" of the Universe ever 
taken; the image contains such stunning detail that it may be one of 
the most important scientific results of recent years.

Scientists using NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), 
during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky, captured the 
new cosmic portrait, capturing the afterglow of the big bang, called 
the cosmic microwave background.

"We've captured the infant universe in sharp focus, and from this 
portrait we can now describe the universe with unprecedented 
accuracy," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight 
Center (GSFC), Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. 
"The data are solid, a real gold mine," he said.

One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is the first 
generation of stars to shine in the universe first ignited only 200 
million years after the big bang, much earlier than many scientists 
had expected. 

In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the universe 
at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small one percent margin 
of error.

The WMAP team found that the big bang and Inflation theories continue 
to ring true. The contents of the universe include 4 percent atoms 
(ordinary matter), 23 percent of an unknown type of dark matter, and 
73 percent of a mysterious dark energy. The new measurements even shed 
light on the nature of the dark energy, which acts as a sort of an 
anti-gravity.

"These numbers represent a milestone in how we view our universe," 
said Dr. Anne Kinney, NASA director for astronomy and physics. "This 
is a true turning point for cosmology."

The light we see today, as the cosmic microwave background, has 
traveled over 13 billion years to reach us. Within this light are 
infinitesimal patterns that mark the seeds of what later grew into 
clusters of galaxies and the vast structure we see all around us.

Patterns in the big bang afterglow were frozen in place only 380,000 
years after the big bang, a number nailed down by this latest 
observation. These patterns are tiny temperature differences within 
this extraordinarily evenly dispersed microwave light bathing the 
universe, which now averages a frigid 2.73 degrees above absolute zero 
temperature. WMAP resolves slight temperature fluctuations, which vary 
by only millionths of a degree.

Theories about the evolution of the universe make specific predictions 
about the extent of these temperature patterns. Like a detective, the 
WMAP team compared the unique "fingerprint" of patterns imprinted on 
this ancient light with fingerprints predicted by various cosmic 
theories and found a match.

WMAP will continue to observe the cosmic microwave background for an 
additional three years, and its data will reveal new insights into the 
theory of Inflation and the nature of the dark energy.

"This is a beginning of a new stage in our study of the early 
universe," said WMAP team member Prof. David N. Spergel of Princeton 
University, N.J. "We can use this portrait not only to predict the 
properties of the nearby universe, but can also use it to understand 
the first moments of the big bang," he said.

WMAP is named in honor of David Wilkinson of Princeton University, a 
world-renown cosmologist and WMAP team member who died in September 
2002.

Launched on June 30, 2001, WMAP maintains a distant orbit about the 
second Lagrange Point, or "L2," a million miles from Earth.

WMAP is the result of a partnership between the GSFC and Princeton 
University. Additional Science Team members are located at Brown 
University, Providence R.I., the University of British Columbia, 
Vancouver, BC, the University of Chicago, and the University of 
California, Los Angeles. WMAP is part of the Explorer program, managed 
by GSFC.

For more information, including high-quality images, videos and press 
products, refer to:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0206mapresults.html

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov

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