Physicist’s Stories of an Infant Universe

Tiny differences in radiation dating back to the Big Bang are now helping scientists create a comprehensive history of the universe, a 13.7 billion year saga full of interpretive star dance.

Nobel Prize winner and UC Berkeley professor George Smoot kicked off the new community lecture series, “Science at the Theater,” with a presentation on his award-winning research last night at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Smoot won the Nobel Prize last year with NASA scientist John Mather for working to confirm the Big Bang theory by examining temperature fluctuations in cosmic background radiation, which is a type of radiation emitted in the Big Bang.

In his lecture, Smoot chronicled the creation of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite and discussed galaxy formation as predicted from radiation data.

The satellite, launched in 1989, was designed by Smoot and his colleagues to measure cosmic background radiation.

Monitoring this radiation allows scientists to catch a glimpse of an infant universe, Smoot said.

“We're probing the universe when it was very young,” Smoot said. “We're making an image of it when it is essentially an embryo.”

The satellite, while not the first attempt to measure the radiation, greatly improved data resolution.

This improved resolution provided the first reliable map of the thermal anisotropy, or small temperature fluctuations, of the radiation, Smoot said.

Fluctuation data collected from the satellite and the subsequent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite are now being used to reconstruct the formation of galaxies and stars, Smoot said.

“What we believe we have here is an image of what we think were quantum

fluctuations of the very early universe blown up by inflation and expansion of the universe to become things like our own galaxy,” Smoot said.

These fluctuations, when subjected to forces like gravity, slowly interacted and matured to form a distinct cobweb mesh of galaxies, Smoot said.

Smoot showed several images and videos based on cosmic background radiation data that actually simulate the movement and formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters over billions of years.

Some high-resolution data can even be used to capture star formation, Smoot said.

But Smoot said research is still improving. The Planck satellite, set to launch in 2008 by the European Space Agency, should provide even better resolution.

Because the new satellite will be able to detect even smaller fluctuations, the historical image of the universe should sharpen, Smoot said.

“We have entered in, for the last decade, into the golden age of cosmology,” Smoot said. “We have tremendous opportunities. We have really reached an intellectual understanding of the universe.”

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