ECHO OF CREATION - WMAP

WMAP SATELLITE – WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE

As we discuss last article there is no single universe. Our one is a bubble of endless cosmic ocean. This is called parallel universe. Astronomers around the world now speculating about how the parallel universe look like? Is there any possible to jump into these parallel universe if fate of our universe come to end?

Photos from the WMAP satellite gives the massive flood of data to support this new theory and picture of what happened nearly 380000 years after the big bang. Let’s see how importance and what is WMAP is. In 2001 after naming to the satellite as David Wilkinson pioneering astronomer it was launched. It measures the colossal energy left over from original fireball that gives the birth of all stars and galaxies around the universe over billions of years.

When you see the night sky with bare eyes probably we can see tiny bright stars planets and moon only. If you wear X-ray vision glass your persistence of view of the universe would be completely different. Humans view and the spider’s view of the sky never be the same. There are many invisible waves are spread and encroached us every second throughout entire universe. Those are called Microwaves. WMAP detects these microwave radiation which is the balance of big bang. It has been called Echo of Creation by Time magazine. Thereafter astronomers never look into the sky in same way again.

10 years before WMAP, COBE was launched for the same purpose. It doesn’t give the clear face of creation. To compare COBE and WMAP consider universe as 18 year old COBE gives the face of few months old baby where WMAP gives the picture of less than a day old child.

The reason WMAP can give us unprecedented picture of infant universe is that the night sky is like a time machine. Because light travels in a finite speed. Light from moon reach us in just more than a second. From sun to earth it takes 8 minutes. Which means we see 8 minutes older sun than the present state of sun. Like that it takes years to reach us from stars. For example when we see alpha centauri (which is 4.2 light years away from your home) is 4.2 years older than it’s current state.

Likewise WMAP detects the radiation emitted from edge of the visible universe and even before that from the original fireball that created the universe. To describe this event consider a 100 floor building. If the street represent the big bang, looking from top of the building distant galaxies are placed in the 10^th floor and powerful quasars which can be seen by the telescopes are 7^th floor and now the WMAP’s measurements are half inch above the street. [Parallel worlds, Michio Kaku]

                                                            Image credit : lambda.gfscnasa.gov

To the unaided eye WMAP map of the sky consist of only black tiny dots and uninteresting to see. But it gives the bang to the scientists. They compare the tiny dots to the seeds. How the seed becoming a tree after planting, those dots becomes a gigantic galactic clusters and galaxies that glow up the heavens. In this way our Milky Way galaxy also a tiny seed of some of these dots. By measuring the fluctuations, we see the origin of the galactic clusters, like dots painted on the cosmic tapestry that hangs over a night sky. Personally I suggest this is when we entered the golden age of cosmology. By WMAP our universe 13.8 billion years old. This was confirmed after by many painstaking experiments. Before it was miscalculated 2 or 3 billion years old.

Over a period we believe everything in our universe is made up of atoms. You, your duck, me and everything you see in this universe is made up of atoms. This is what every high school science classes teaches us. WMAP has now demolish that generations of belief. Because WMAP showed the avalanche in the map of the universe. That is everything we see in this universe is only 4%. Which means earth, stars, galaxies we see, quasars we know the entire known universe is comes under that 4%. So what is the 96% consist of? We step into the greatest mysterious of all time.