Cosmic Microwave Background

Cosmic Microwave
Background
Radiation
Presented by Group 6
Introduction
The cosmic microwave background, or
CMB, is an electromagnetic radiation that
is leftover from the Big Bang or the
formation of the universe.
When you look into the night sky, you assume the space between the stars and planet is a
complete darkness. That is what you see too when you gaze through a traditional optical
telescope. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope shows a faint background
brightness, or glow, almost uniform, that is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other
object.
The Cosmic Microwave
Background
The CMB is a faint glow of light, a faint cosmic background radiation, filling all space,
falling on earth from every direction with nearly uniform intensity. It is an important source
of data on the early universe because it is the oldest electromagnetic radiation, the oldest
light, dating back to when the first atoms were formed.
As theory goes, when the universe was born it underwent rapid inflation, expansion, and
cooling. The expansion of the universe caused the wavelengths from the Big Bang to spread
out, and said wavelengths still exists today, and for as long as the universe exists and
continue to expand.
01 The Discovery
The good place to start. . .
The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation constitutes a major development
in modern physical cosmology — its discovery backed up the Big Bang theory to an extent.
Although, its discovery isn’t quite intentional. . .
New Jersey, 1964
The year was 1964. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was working at the Bell Telephone
Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey with a supersensitive, 6-meter horn antenna built to
detect radio waves bounced off Echo balloon satellites, intending to study the supernova
remnant of the constellation Cassiopeia.
To be able to detect these faint radio waves, they have to block any radar or radio broadcast
that might interfere their receiver. When Penzias and Wilson reduced their data, they found a
low, steady, mysterious noise that persisted in their receiver.
low, steady, mysterious noise that persisted in their receiver.
They thought their equipment was malfunctioning; but after thoroughly checking their
equipment, removing some pigeons nesting in the antenna and cleaning out the accumulated
droppings, the noise remained.
This residual noise was 100 times more intense than they had expected, was evenly spread
over the sky, and was present day and night. They were certain that the radiation they
detected on a wavelength of 7.35 centimeters did not come from the Earth, the Sun, or our
galaxy.
02 The Formation
How did we come from a ball of plasma into this?
Let’s do a little time travel again, this time to 400,000 years after the Big Bang. During that
time, all of space is permeated with a supercharged particle with a temperature of several
thousand degrees — too hot for electrons and protons to even coalesce into atoms.
This ionized soup is called a plasma, and it was emitting a thermal distribution of
electromagnetic waves, as everything with a temperature does.
As this plasma cooled, its temperature eventually dropped below the 3,000 degree mark
where neutral atoms can finally form. The light that the plasma emitted then just before
neutralized was one final hurrah, one final flash — and now that light could free stream
through the universe, forever.
Before, during, and after this event, the universe was expanding, that’s what thinned out the
plasma and made it cool down. Expanding space stretches the wavelength of free streaming
light through a process called cosmological redshift.
So over the course of a few million years, that thermal spectrum of light was redshifted into
longer and longer wavelengths and eventually becoming infra-red.
So, if you throw in another 13 billion years of space expansion, all that light has redshifted
into the microwave band that we perceive today as the CMB.
fin.
Quiz
1. The ionized soup that is all over space after Big Bang is called?
2. What was the name of the laboratory where the CMB was first discovered?
3. The process in which stretches the wavelength of free streaming light.
4–5. The names of the astronomers that discovered the CMB.
5–10. In your own words, describe the CMB.
10–15. Explain how the CMB formed in a simple paragraph.

Cosmic Microwave Background

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