Word: banging
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang, first postulated in the 1920s, to maintain its reign as the dominant explanation of the cosmos. According to the theory, the universe burst into being as a submicroscopic, unimaginably dense knot of pure energy that flew outward in all directions, spewing radiation as it went, congealing into particles and then into atoms of gas. Over billions of years, the gas was compressed by gravity into galaxies, stars, planets and, eventually, even humans...
...first evidence of this scenario was established in 1964, when astronomers discovered the cosmic microwave background, the original radiation from the Big Bang. The second part, though, was much trickier. In order for gravity to make galaxies out of atoms, it needed something to work with -- some chunks of space in which the atoms were closer together, a region of greater than average density, so that they could draw surrounding matter in. The excess densities need not have been very large, but they had to be there if matter was to congeal. And if they were present, they should...
...Cosmic Background Explorer satellite -- COBE -- has found something astronomers have been seeking for nearly 30 years: an almost imperceptible pattern of warm and cool patches in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the oldest light in the cosmos. The radiation was created only 300,000 years after the Big Bang explosion that began the universe, a time when all of space was hot, dense and incandescently bright. The radiation is still around now, 15 billion years later, cooled far below zero and transformed from visible light to microwaves. Its discovery in the mid-1960s confirmed the Big Bang as the premier...
Failure to find the variations until now had understandably made scientists a little nervous. Humans and galaxies obviously exist, so if COBE didn't see them sooner or later, that meant the Big Bang theory, the foundation of modern astrophysics, could have been in serious trouble. But tiny as the variations are -- 30 millionths of a degree at most -- they are enough to keep the Big Bang alive. Says David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist: "This is great stuff." (See related story on page...
...satellite reveals the cosmos as it was just after the Big Bang...