THE RACE TO MAP THE

Two high-profile satellites will soon pin

down the fundamental numbers describing
our universe unless a host of Earth-based
machines beat them to it. By Joshua Roth

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ts invisible to the human eye; it shows only vague,

random patterns; and it can be measured precisely only
from the coldest, driest places on Earth (or from space).
Yet cosmologists prize it far more than the sharpest
snapshots of the prettiest galaxies. The object of their
affection? The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which lights up the entire sky at a near-absolute-zero
temperature of 2.73 Kelvin.
Discovered by accident in 1965, the CMB was quickly recognized as key evidence for the Big Bang theory of the universes origin. Its textbook blackbody spectrum proved that
the universe was once hot, dense, and opaque, and its isotropy
proved that the early universe was remarkably smooth on the
largest scales.
Now, ironically, the worlds cosmologists are eagerly focusing on minuscule departures from the CMBs near-perfect

To probe microwaves left over from the Big Bang, astronomers employ instruments like Viper (above), a 2-meter telescope that stares
at a cold, dry sky from within the conical snow shield in the foreground of the main picture. Dotting the horizon is the familiar dome
of the United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Viper and
similar devices have opened a new chapter in microwave cosmology.
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September 1999 Sky & Telescope

isotropy, or directional uniformity. These slight deviations, or

anisotropies, are about to produce a new wave of fundamental
cosmic revelations.
The first device to show convincing evidence for hot and
cold spots on the microwave sky was the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, launched in 1989. COBEs
discovery of CMB anisotropies did not come easily; the spots it
saw differ from one another in temperature by only one part in
100,000 on average. Cosmologists believe that this finding
the discovery of the century, if not of all time, in Stephen
Hawkings words revealed density differences in the
300,000-year-old universe. According to nearly all cosmological theories, similar density differences gave rise to todays gal-

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

axy superclusters and voids (S&T: July 1992, page 34).

However, COBEs angular resolution was a coarse 7 a sky
patch nearly as big as the Big Dippers Bowl. The spacecraft was
blind to temperature differences on smaller angular scales. Yet
fine-scale anisotropies have become cosmologys new Holy Grail.
Why so? Because in principle they can reveal the values of
almost all of the cosmological parameters, says CMB researcher Andrew E. Lange (Caltech). Those parameters range
from the Hubble constant (H 0), which quantifies the universes present-day expansion rate, to the cosmological density parameter (W 0), which tells how much matter and energy
the universe contains. Also included is the so-called cosmological constant (L), the mysterious force that may be hurling

the universe into a new era of runaway expansion.

Inspired by these hopes, a host of ground-based and balloonborne instruments have been measuring CMB anisotropies on
angular scales beyond COBEs reach. Although some of these
efforts began even before COBEs launch, progress has accelerated in the last couple of years. The experiments have required
logistically complex high-altitude balloon flights; grueling
stints at the South Pole; prodigious computer programming;
and the construction and transport of delicate microwave receivers and cryogenic cooling systems. What have these efforts
taught us, and what challenges remain for next-generation experiments like NASAs Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite,
which is due for launch next year?

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope September 1999

45

Average temperature fluctuation (millionths of degree Kelvin)

100

Sounding Out the Primordial Soup

80

SK

PYTHON
60

OVRO

QMAP

CAT
40

TEN

20

VIPER

COBE

10

Angular scale (degrees of arc)

Todays provisional view of the microwave backgrounds power spectrum: the average temperature difference between spots on the sky,
plotted against the angle between those spots. Individual experiments have large uncertainties, and some disagree with others. Nevertheless, the microwave sky appears to be blobbiest on scales of 1/2
to 1 offering new insights into the universes density and curvature. Courtesy Max Tegmark.
1.0

0.0

(
m

Bagging the Peak

+
=1

1.0
0.0

Favored by microwaves

Fla
tu
ni
ve
rs
e

0.5

Galaxy clusters too massive for these values

0.5

Likeliest values overall

Energy density of cosmological constant ( )

Favored by supernovae

Universe
too old
for these
values

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

Matter density ( m )

Studies of high-redshift supernovae constrain the difference between the densities of matter and cosmological-constant energy.
Anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background constrain their
sum. In concert, the two techniques seem to favor a low cosmic matter density, a significant cosmological constant, and possibly a flat
universe. The latter is a key prediction of the inflation theory. Adapted from Astrophysical Journal Letters.
46

September 1999 Sky & Telescope

Before answering that question, lets first look at how so much

science can be squeezed from CMB anisotropies in the first place.
The photons that constitute the CMB werent always free to
roam empty space. In fact, in the universes infancy there was no
empty space; the cosmos was a dense soup of photons, electrons,
and protons, with a sprinkling of light atomic nuclei. It was also
opaque; photons couldnt travel far without being scattered by
charged particles (usually electrons). Radiation decoupled from
particulate matter only when the universe cooled to a yellow-hot
3,000 K. At that point, most electrons joined up with protons
to form hydrogen atoms, and the universe became transparent.
The photons that date from that epoch have flown freely ever
since. However, they have been stretched, or redshifted, more than
a thousandfold by the universes expansion, making microwaves
of what was once visible light.
Before this decoupling took place, soundlike pressure waves
coursed through the primordial soup, compressing it slightly in
places and thinning it elsewhere. When photons and particles
went their separate ways, the acoustic peaks and troughs were
frozen in place, and they are faintly visible on todays microwave
sky. Youre basically seeing sound waves when you map the
CMB on small angular scales, says theorist Wayne Hu (Institute for Advanced Study).
Decoupling was a gradual process, so the sound waves with
the shortest wavelengths were washed out. But others were far
too large to be erased, particularly those that were 300,000
light-years across the size of the event horizon at the time
of decoupling. The biggest oscillation that happened since the
universe started is how University of Chicago researcher Mark
Dragovan describes these maximum-size waves. Cosmologists
have expected these waves to leave a conspicuous collective
mark, the first acoustic peak, on the CMB power spectrum (see
the figure at left above).
Of course, conspicuous is a relative term, since to see the
first acoustic peak one must measure part-per-million differences in the brightness or temperature of the microwave sky.
And this must be done in the presence of much stronger foreground signals from the Earths atmosphere and from the Milky
Ways interstellar medium.

Nevertheless, cosmologists have risen to the challenge. In the

view of most of the fields experts, no single experiment on its
own has produced unequivocal evidence for the first acoustic
peak. But taken together, more than a dozen disparate studies
seem to show it exists, and a consensus is beginning to emerge
on its properties. Its totally clear that theres a bump in the
microwave background, says Dragovan a far cry from the
situation a few short years ago, when the earliest small-scale
measurements were wildly at odds with one another (S&T:
October 1994, page 34).
The diagram at top left shows measurements of the CMB
power spectrum from nearly two dozen different experiments.
At the largest scales (10 and above), average temperature differences were measured principally by COBE.
On scales ranging from a few degrees to tens of arcminutes,
the data have come from locations as diverse as Californias
Owens Valley (OVRO), the island of Tenerife (TEN), the plains
of Saskatchewan, Canada (SK), and the snowfields of the South
Pole (Python, Viper). A balloon-borne telescope (QMAP) that

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Right: This all-sky map shows the temperatures of 7-wide zones, as

measured by the COBE satellite during four years of operation beginning a decade ago. Variations are color-coded, with red regions typically 0.0002 K warmer than black ones the
equivalent of 7-millimeter ripples on a 100-meter-high
plateau. Below: This simulated map shows what astronomers expect from the Microwave Anisotropy Probe
satellite, to be launched next year: enough resolution to
detect distinct event horizons in the 300,000-year-old
universe. Both maps are shown in galactic coordinates, with
the plane of the Milky Way running horizontally through the
center. Courtesy Gary Hinshaw, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

flew 30,000 meters above the deserts of Texas and New Mexico
also contributed to todays picture of the first acoustic peak.
These vantage points were chosen in part to minimize interference from water vapor in the Earths atmosphere. (One exception,
the Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope, or CAT, used interferometry to
winnow microwave maps from the cloudy skies of Cambridge,
England.)
These experiments have collectively delineated the first
acoustic peak, showing that temperature differences of roughly
25 parts per million (or 70 micro-Kelvins) tend to exist between
points that are between 1/2 and 1 apart in position. The consensus is hardly etched in stone. The error bars on the position, width, and height of the acoustic peak remain large, and
unexplained conflicts exist between some of the experiments.
Nevertheless, the still-imperfect picture of the peak can constrain cosmological models, says Steven T. Myers (University of
Pennsylvania), who performed some of the first Owens Valley
CMB observations in the 1980s. Seen on the far edge of
todays visible universe, a 300,000-light-year-wide patch of
space can be thought of as a cosmological standard ruler.
And the exact angular size of a ruler at the CMBs redshift
(roughly 1,100) depends sensitively on the overall curvature of
space, which in turn is determined by W 0. As things stand, a
strongly open universe one with W 0 less than 0.5 is just
not possible, says Myers.
By itself, this conclusion is hardly new (S&T: January 1996,
page 20). But there is a new twist. In todays thinking, W 0 represents the sum of the cosmic matter density (Wm) and the
cosmological constant, with the latter expressed in the same
units (WL). A universe with WL = 0 and Wm = 1 will eternally
decelerate but never collapse. Until recently most cosmologists
favored this scenario and dismissed the possibility of a nonzero L. However, several lines of evidence limit Wm to about

0.2 or so. So the difference must be made up by L; that

is, W must be 0.3 or more.
Because the first acoustic peak only constrains
the sum of Wm and W , it only weakly makes the
case for a cosmological constant. However, completely independent evidence for L has recently
emerged from studies of supernovae billions of
light-years away (S&T: September 1998, page 38).
Those studies use the exploding stars brightnesses to
infer their distances independently of their redshifts.
Those distances were shortened by the deceleration of the
universes expansion, which is caused by gravity (Wm), and
lengthened by any acceleration, driven by W , that may have
taken place. Consequently, the supernova studies set limits on
the difference between Wm and W .
As high-school algebra students know, you can solve two
equations for two variables. The graph at the bottom of the facing page shows how CMB and supernova data together have
narrowed the total cosmological density of matter and energy
(W 0) down to a very narrow range. Particularly exciting is the
fact that the combined data sets seem to be perfectly consistent
with a flat universe (one with W 0 = 1). If the universe still appears flat when more stringent data become available, astronomers will have confirmed a key prediction of the inflation theory, which posits that the universe ballooned extremely rapidly
in its earliest moments, flattening out any initial curvature.

On the Microwave Horizon

In the 1970s cosmology was widely construed as a search for
two numbers: the universes expansion rate and the rate at
which the expansion is slowing down. But since then cosmological parameters have sprouted like weeds, describing everything from primordial mass fluctuations to the density of
baryons (particles like protons and neutrons, which constitute
most of normal matter). In the April 1st Astrophysical Journal
Letters Max Tegmark (Institute for Advanced Study) constrains eight such parameters solely on the basis of the microwave background power spectrum shown on page 46.
Far from being over, the race to map the microwave sky has
only begun. CMB scientists eagerly anticipate next years
launch of NASAs Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) satellite. MAP will measure microwave anisotropies not just in a
few places but across the entire sky, at a precision down to 7
parts per million (20 micro-Kelvins), and it will do so with 13
angular resolution, enough to comfortably bracket the first
acoustic peak (S&T: August 1996, page 16). MAP will observe

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope September 1999

47

EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

Some 5,000 meters above sea level in northern Chile, this mountain valley will soon be home to the Cosmic Background Imager, a 13-antenna
array that will use interferometry techniques to seek superfine ripples in the microwave sky.

from the L2 Lagrangian point, 1.5 million kilometers from

Earth in a direction opposite the Sun. That will eliminate atmospheric interference and make it easier to keep the microwave detectors uniformly cool. With its ability to delineate
the first acoustic peak unambiguously, MAP will be the
COBE of the future, says Myers. COBE codesigner Edward L.
Wright (UCLA) agrees: It might even kill (or confirm) the
cosmological constant.
Other CMB experiments will seek even feebler, finer-scale
acoustic peaks, which cosmologists expect to see on arcminute
scales. The European Space Agency plans to launch the Planck
instrument in 2007 to seek out these subsidiary peaks (July
issue, page 28). Measuring the sizes
and relative heights of these bumps
in the power spectrum should allow
cosmologists to discriminate between
the simplest form of the inflation
theory and its numerous, more complicated competitors. It should also
enable them to establish whether a
first generation of stars or galaxies
reionized all intergalactic hydrogen,
wiping out some of the fine-scale

signatures that date back to the decoupling era.

The advantages to observing microwaves from space are numerous. But that doesnt mean the tinkerers who have driven
CMB research in the post-COBE era are about to quit. Far
from it: a cosmological arms race of sorts has broken out, and
some contestants openly confess a desire to beat the satellites.
One European group (led by the University of Cambridge) and
two U.S. teams (led by Caltech and the University of Chicago)
are deploying interferometers that will measure microwave
anisotropies on scales from arcminutes to degrees over wide
stretches of sky. And Lange and his collaborators have already
obtained copious data from BOOMERanG, a balloon-borne
telescope that will hopefully be able to
measure the peak in a single run, says
Myers. (The BOOMERanG team was immersed in data analysis as this issue of Sky
& Telescope went to press, and their findings may see print by years end.)
Each of these ambitious experiments has
its limitations. Some lack all-sky coverage,
while others will have a harder time than
others telling the CMB from the Milky
Ways microwaves. Its the combination of
data sets that will give the most leverage
on cosmological parameters, says Lange
even if the highly touted MAP and
Planck satellites achieve their lofty goals.
The field is still in its infancy.

Above: This color-coded map shows a 6-wide patch of the microwave sky in the constellation Draco. The region is the second studied by the Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope,
a three-element interferometer operating in England (left). The hottest and coldest
spots are colored bright yellow and purple, respectively, and they probably represent
real features in the microwave sky; the other ripples are most likely a mix of true cosmic background anisotropies and instrumental noise. Courtesy Joanne C. Baker, University of California, Berkeley.
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September 1999 Sky & Telescope

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.