Planck 'Time Machine' to Study Big Bang

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Planck 'Time Machine' to Study Big Bang
In this image, Planck is superimposed on a false-colour map of the CMB charted by NASA's WMAP satellite in 2003. Planck will improve enormously the sharpness and clarity of all the features in the map. (Image credit: ESA (AOES Medialab), NASA/WMAP)

It's notexactly Doc Brown's DeLorean from "Back to the Future," but theEuropean Space Agency's (ESA) Planck Observatory will be something of a cosmictime machine after it launches this week.

Planck willbe launchedby ESA along with the Herschel Space Observatory aboard an Ariane 5 ECAlauncher from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on May 14.

This relicradiation is called the Cosmic Microwave Background, and was discovered byaccident in 1965. The CMB is an "echo" of the Big Bang, the cooled remnant ofthe first light emitted after the universe had cooled enough to allow it totravel freely.

"The cosmicmicrowave background shows us the universe directly at age 400,000 years, notthe movie, not the historical novel, but the original photons," said CharlesLawrence, NASA project scientist for Planck at JPL.

"Planckwill give us the clearest view ever of this baby universe, showing us theresults of physical processes in the first brief moments after the Big Bang,and the starting point for the formation of stars and galaxies," Lawrence said.

Betterunderstanding the natureof dark energy could help answer a key question about the future of theuniverse: "Will it keep on expanding for ever or some day collapse backupon itself?" said Simon White of the Max Planck Institute forAstrophysics in Germany, which developed key software for Planck.

Planck isslated for a 15-month mission, time enough for two full surveys of the sky. Themission could be extended for another year, but even with the 15 months, "Planckwill give an answer to many important questions of cosmology," White said."The satellite is the most powerful tool ever for studying the CosmicMicrowave Background developed."

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Andrea Thompson
Andrea Thompson
Contributor

Andrea Thompson is an associate editor at Scientific American, where she covers sustainability, energy and the environment. Prior to that, she was a senior writer covering climate science at Climate Central and a reporter and editor at Live Science, where she primarily covered Earth science and the environment. She holds a graduate degree in science health and environmental reporting from New York University, as well as a bachelor of science and and masters of science in atmospheric chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.