The cosmic microwave background has been a treasure trove of information about the universe, as well as a source of questions that have not yet been resolved. In this video, Don Lincoln describes two unsolved mysteries of the CMB. The first makes you ask if the solar system has a special place in the universe, and the second is a giant cold spot that could be the signature of a giant void or, much more unlikely, of colliding universes.
The cosmic microwave background is the fossil remnant of the fireball of the Big Bang. Aside from demonstrating that the Big Bang happened, it can tell us how big the universe is and how much dark matter and energy the universe contains. In this video, Fermilab’s Don Lincoln guides you through this interesting topic.
The Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, is the remnant of the primordial fireball of the Big Bang. In this video, Fermilab’s Don Lincoln explains how it came to be. This is the first of a three-part series, with following videos to describe what secrets the CMB has revealed and what mysteries remain to be solved.
From AZoMaterials, Feb. 18, 2021: Fermilab scientist Jeff McMahon and his research team have designed a new kind of metamaterials-based antireflection coating for the silicon lenses used in cameras used to capture the cosmic microwave background.
A Fermilab scientist and his team have developed a new way to make antireflective lenses, enabling big discoveries about the cosmic microwave background radiation and the fabric of the universe.
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to lead a DOE/NSF experiment that combines observatories at the South Pole and in Chile’s high desert. Fermilab plans to be a key partner on the experiment, called CMB-S4, which aims to undertake an unprecedented survey of the early universe.
From UChicago News, Feb. 6, 2020: Fermilab and University of Chicago scientist Brad Benson and colleagues use a different method to calculate the masses of distant galaxies: the polarization, or orientation, of the light left over from the moments after the Big Bang. In doing so, they demonstrate how to “weigh” galaxy clusters using light from the earliest moments of the universe — a new method that could help shed light on dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the cosmos.
For the first time, a team of scientists has used the orientation of light left over from the early universe to detect gravitational lensing from galaxy clusters – the bending of light around these massive objects. Using gravitational lensing data taken by the South Pole Telescope and the Dark Energy Camera, Fermilab scientist Brad Benson and colleagues have demonstrated a new way to “weigh” galaxy clusters and ultimately shed light on dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the cosmos.
Ground-based experiments designed to study the cosmic microwave background have gotten larger and more sophisticated over time. Now, nearly 200 scientists who have up until this point worked on different competing CMB experiments have joined forces to propose a fourth-generation experiment, the largest ground-based one yet, called CMB-S4.
From Nature Reviews Physics, Jan. 28, 2019: The Dark Energy Survey completed its six-year-mission to map more than 300 million distant galaxies; however, an equally arduous task — analyzing the acquired 50 terabytes of data with a view to understanding the expansion of the universe — is just beginning.