Results
Compared to MAXIMA's competitor the BOOMERanG experiment, MAXIMA's data covers a smaller part of the sky but with much more detail. By the end of the year 2000 the experiment provided the most accurate measurements of the cosmic background radiation (CMB) fluctuations on small angular scales. With this data it is possible to calculate the first three acoustic peaks from the CMB power spectrum. These greatly confirm the standard cosmological model by measuring a baryon density of about 4%, which agrees with the density calculated from Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The measurement of the flatness of the Universe also confirms a major prediction of inflationary cosmology, although BOOMERang was the first to discover this.
Read more about this topic: Millimeter Anisotropy E Xperiment IMaging Array
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