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Cosmic microwave background: Quick Facts

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Cosmic microwave background offers evidence of gas flowing in galaxy clusters • Oct. 29, 2026, 12:10 PM ET (Phys.org)

Facts

Also Known As CMB • three-degree blackbody radiation • cosmic background radiation

Photos and Videos

Oval map of the cosmic microwave background radiation from NASA's WMAP mission, showing a mottled pattern of blue, green, yellow, and red representing temperature variations.
cosmic microwave background
Planck
Three views of the infrared universe by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.In the view of the full sky (top), radiation represented by the S-shaped blue area is emitted by dust in the solar system. When that light is removed (middle), light from dust in the Milky Way (the band at the centre) and Magellanic Clouds (lower right) remains. A uniform field of cosmic infrared background radiation is revealed when the galactic light is removed (bottom); the dark line at the centre is an artifact of the filtering process.
Know about the Millennium Simulation at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and learn how to simulate the universe on a personal computer
Understand how the polarization of the light from cosmic background radiation influenced the early development of the universe
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Related Topics and References

Topics
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Key People

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Rainer Weiss
American physicist
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Rashid Sunyaev
Russian-German astrophysicist
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James Peebles
American physicist
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Arno Penzias
American astrophysicist
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Robert Woodrow Wilson
American astronomer

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