Planck space mission sheds light on the Universe

The Planck Space Telescope has produced the best map ever made of the most ancient light in the Universe, with help from a Canadian team led by University of British Columbia Prof. Douglas Scott and University of Toronto Prof. J. Richard Bond.

Unveiled today in Paris, the first results of the 15-month mission show that the Universe is slightly older than previously thought, expanding more slowly and that there is more matter than known before. The data also revealed a portrait of the Universe when it was just 380,000 years old.

Led by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Planck Space Telescope has been surveying the sky since launched in 2009. The telescope’s accuracy allows it to pinpoint faint, minute patterns – differences in light and temperature that correspond to slightly different densities in the matter left over from the Big Bang.

“We now have a precise recipe for our Universe: how much dark and normal matter it is made of; how fast it is expanding; how lumpy it is and how that lumpiness varies with scale; and how the remnant radiation from the Big Bang is scattered,” said UBC’s Douglas Scott. “It is astonishing that the entire Universe seems to be describable by a model using just these six quantities. Now, Planck has told us the values of those numbers with even higher accuracy.”

Planck’s precision has also given astrophysicists a number of new puzzles to solve.

“Our maps reveal unexplained, large-scale features that excite the imaginations of physicists who have been eagerly awaiting what Planck has to say about the early Universe,” said U of T’s J. Richard Bond