Cosmic microwave background

The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its energy density exceeds that of all the photons emitted by all the stars in the history of the universe. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1964 by the American radio astronomers Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s. The CMB is the key experimental evidence of the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. In the Big Bang cosmological models, during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an opaque fog of dense, hot plasma of sub-atomic particles. As the universe expanded, this plasma cooled to the point where protons and electrons combined to form neutral atoms of mostly hydrogen. Unlike the plasma, these atoms could not scatter thermal radiation by Thomson scattering, and so the universe became transparent. Known as the recombination epoch, this decoupling event released photons to travel freely through space. However, the photons have grown less energetic due to the cosmological redshift associated with the expansion of the universe. The surface of last scattering refers to a shell at the right distance in space so photons are now received that were originally emitted at the time of decoupling. The CMB is very smooth and uniform, but maps by sensitive detectors detect small but important temperature variations. Ground and space-based experiments such as COBE, WMAP and Planck have been...