Main Result
The main result of the mission is contained in the various oval maps of the CMB spectrum over the years. These oval images present the temperature distribution gained by the WMAP team from the observations by the telescope of the mission. Measured is the temperature obtained from a Planck's law interpretation of the microwave background. The oval map covers the whole sky. The results describe the state of the universe only some hundred-thousand years after the Big Bang, which happened roughly 13.7 billion years before our time. The microwave background is very homogeneous in temperature (the relative variations from the mean, which presently is still 2.7 kelvins, are only of the order of 5x10−5. The temperature variations corresponding to the local directions are presented through different colours (the "red" directions are hotter, the "blue" directions cooler than the average).
Read more about this topic: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
Famous quotes containing the words main and/or result:
“The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)