WMAP has produced a new, more detailed picture of the infant universe. During this burst of expansion, which is known as inflation, the universe grew exponentially and doubled in size at least 90 times. When the universe was very young - something like a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (whew!) - it underwent an incredible growth spurt. Step 2: The universe's first growth spurt Among other discoveries, WMAP was able to determine the age of the universe - about 13.7 billion years old. In 2001, NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission to study the conditions as they existed in the early universe by measuring radiation from the cosmic microwave background. This relic of the Big Bang pervades the universe and is visible to microwave detectors, which allows scientists to piece together clues of the early universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born as a very hot, very dense, single point in space.Ĭosmologists are unsure what happened before this moment, but with sophisticated space missions, ground-based telescopes and complicated calculations, scientists have been working to paint a clearer picture of the early universe and its formation.Ī key part of this comes from observations of the cosmic microwave background, which contains the afterglow of light and radiation left over from the Big Bang. Instead, it was the appearance of space everywhere in the universe, researchers have said.
The Big Bang was not an explosion in space, as the theory's name might suggest. An illustration of the timeline of the universe following the big bang.
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