ThePlanck space telescopeof the European Space Agency (ESA) hastraced the most complete map of the Universedeveloped to date, an image of the entire celestial vault that provides new evidence on the process of formation of stars and galaxies and allowsstudy the first phases of the formation of the cosmos.
“With these results we are opening the door through which scientists will be able to search for the missing links that will allow us to understand how the Universe was formed and how it has evolved since then,” explained ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood.
In the opinion of the space agency, this first image of the complete sky constitutes an “extraordinary treasure, full of unpublished data for astronomers”, sincereflects from the closest regions of the Milky Way to the limits of space and time. The disk of the Milky Way runs along the center of the image. The first thing that catches your eye are the filaments of dust and gas that extend above and below the galaxy, right where the new stars are forming. More intriguing is the mottled background of the image, which presents the‘cosmic microwave background radiation’(CRMB, for its acronym in English), the oldest light in the Cosmos, with remnants of the explosion that occurred 13.7 billion years ago and that gave rise to the Universe.
Cosmic radiation background
The microwave pattern is the fingerprint of what today makes up the clusters and superclusters of galaxies, and allows us to observe what the Cosmos was like moments after its creation. The different colors represent minute differences in the temperature and density of matter in the universe. The CMBR spans the entire map, but much of it is hidden behind radiation from the Milky Way. So,in the post-processing of the data, the contribution of the Milky Way will be eliminated to be able to observe the cosmic background radiationIn its whole.
When this work is done, Planck will be able to show the most accurate image of cosmic background radiation ever obtained. The big question now is whether the data canunveil the traces of the primeval period known as ‘cosmic inflation’. The hypotheses postulate that during this epoch, which took place just after the Big Bang, the Universe expanded exponentially in a very short period of time. “This image is only a small preview of everything Planck will be able to observe”, has concluded ESA Planck project scientist Jan Tauber.
