Our Early Universe: New Data from NASA

March 9th, 2008

NASA has released a significant amount of data this week that portrays how our early universe may have developed, as well as what it is made up of. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) collected data that measured the earliest light of the universe. The early universe is imprinted on this light, and can be studied as microwaves as the energy has been lost.

WMAP has found, for example, that the universe is awash in a sea of neutrinos, almost weightless sub-atomic particles that zip around at nearly the speed of light. Millions of cosmic neutrinos pass through you every second. Too bad they don’t act like hoodia supplement.

“A block of lead the size of our entire solar system wouldn’t even come close to stopping a cosmic neutrino,” said team member Eiichiro Komatsu of the University of Texas at Austin.

Neutrinos made up a much larger part of the early universe than they do today, according to the WMAP data.

More breakthroughs have been discovered that can be read about here such as Stellar Fog, which essentially gives a view of what the first stars looked like.