Space ‘textures’ nearly ruled out in WMap study – WBNews

The very fabric of space is not as “knotted” as some theories predict it should be, say researchers. Just after the Big Bang, the Universe began to coalesce into the structure we see today, which in some theories would result in knots or “textures”. The warm glow left over from that is now spread across all of space, and is used to test theories of those moments. But a close study of this glow reported in Physical Review Letters has found no evidence of these textures. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), as it is known, is just a few degrees above absolute zero, but it is the minute variations in the glow across the sky that has intrigued astrophysicists. Crystal clear? The earliest Universe was an unimaginably dense place, where the laws of physics as we now know them were subject to very different conditions. The first few instants after the Big Bang gave rise to variations in the dense lump of matter, which now manifest as variations in the CMB. A space telescope called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe was launched in 2001 to examine those variations. Studying the detailed maps it has provided is not unlike entering a kitchen and figuring out how the first steps of dinner were prepared based on the distribution of leftover heat. The CMB A portion of the static on a de-tuned old-fashioned television set is caused by the cosmic microwave background It was first discovered in 1964 as a noise in a…more detail