3October2006.PDFVIP

3 October 2006 Advanced information on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2006 Cosmology and the Cosmic Microwave Background ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Information Department, Box 50005, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46 8 673 95 00, Fax: +46 8 15 56 70, E-mail: info@kva.se, Website: www.kva.se Cosmology and the Cosmic Microwave Background The Universe is approximately about 13.7 billion years old, according to the standard cosmological Big Bang model. At this time, it was a state of high uniformity, was extremely hot and dense was filled with elementary particles and was expanding very rapidly. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the energy of the photons had decreased and was not sufficient to ionise hydrogen atoms. Thereafter the photons “decoupled” from the other particles and could move through the Universe essentially unimpeded. The Universe has expanded and cooled ever since, leaving behind a remnant of its hot past, the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB). We observe this today as a 2.7 K thermal blackbody radiation filling the entire Universe. Observations of the CMB give a unique and detailed information about the early Universe, thereby promoting cosmology to a precision science. Indeed, as will be discussed in more detail below, the CMB is probably the best recorded blackbody spectrum that exists. Removing a dipole anisotropy, most probably due our motion through the Universe, the CMB is isotropic to about one part in 100,000. The 2006 Nobel Prize in physics highlights detailed observations of the CMB performed with the COBE (COsmic Background Explorer) satellite. Early work The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation has an unusual and interesting history. The basic theories as well as the necessary experimental techniques were available long