Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is a NASA Explorer mission that launched June 2001 to make fundamental measurements of cosmology -- the study of the properties of our universe as a whole. WMAP has been stunningly successful, producing our new Standard Model of Cosmology. WMAP's data stream has ended. Full analysis of the data will be completed in the remaining two years of the mission.
Latest Results (based on 7-years of WMAP Data in 2011 Publications)
- The WMAP team has reported the first direct detection of pre-stellar helium, providing an important test of the big bang prediction.
- WMAP now places 50% tighter limits on the standard model of cosmology than our previous 5-year WMAP results.
- WMAP has detected a key signature of inflation.
- WMAP strongly constrains dark energy and geometry of the universe.
- WMAP places new constraints on the number of neutrino-like species in the early universe.
- WMAP has detected, with very high significance, temperature shifts induced by hot gas in galaxy clusters.
- WMAP has produced a visual demonstration of the polarization pattern around hot and cold spots.
See the Details!
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WMAP's Top Ten
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WMAP mission scores 'world's most cited' in science pubs"WMAP results were among the most-cited scientific papers in the world across all scientific disciplines [in 2011], not just in physics and astronomy. It also happened in 2003, 2007 and 2009. This time WMAP captured the first, second and third spots in the rankings in a single year—a science trifecta." THE RED-HOT RESEARCH PAPERS OF 2011"Achieving particular distinction atop the list are three reports from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001. ... Paper #1 in the table, delivering the "cosmological interpretations" of the WMAP seven-year data, had already been cited more than 500 times before the end of its first year of publication." "Every astronomer will remember the moment he heard the results from WMAP." "Before the WMAP results, astronomers and physicists had put together a very implausible picture of our universe. It had a tiny amount of ordinary matter. It had a modest amount of dark matter, whatever that is. It had an overwhelming amount of dark energy, which is a strange beast. I have to confess I was very skeptical of this picture. But the WMAP results have convinced me." "The announcement today represents a rite of passage for cosmology from speculation to precision science." - John Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
"WMAP is the instrument that finally allowed scientists to hear the celestial music and figure out what sort of instrument our cosmos is... WMAP has nearly perfect pitch." "It ends a decades-long argument about the nature of the universe and confirms that our cosmos is much, much stranger than we ever imagined." "All the arguments of the last few decades about the basic properties of the universe—its age, its expansion rate, its composition, its density—have been settled in one fell swoop." The precise and accurate WMAP result is "now the frame of reference for all cosmological investigations." It "dramatically shrinks the volume of parameter space that describes our
"In a sentence, the observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning," said Brian Greene of Columbia University in New York City. "WMAP data support the notion that galaxies are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky." "To me, this is one of the marvels of the modern scientific age."
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