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Articles: Devotion | Quest for Infinity - 08
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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John Mather George Smoot
The implications of the study carried out by Mathers and Smoot are many and we certainly cannot go into all that here – the very fact they were given the Nobel is enough to show that their findings are of far-reaching significance. I am drawing attention to the COBE because one of the things it has given strong support to is the idea of inflation; so inflation is not mere speculation any longer, but something that definitely seems to have happened during the early history of the Universe. [That does not mean Guth’s model is the last word! There are many other equivalent scenarios, but all rely on some form of inflation – that story would come later maybe.]
This figure, produced by the COBE science team, shows three false color images of the sky as seen at microwave frequencies. The orientation of the maps are such that the plane of the Milky Way runs horizontally across the center of each image. The way to understand these figures is as follows. Now the actual temperature of the CMB is 2.725 degrees Kelvin or Absolute. Electromagnetic radiation with this temperature would be in the microwave region. Suppose the detector observes all radiation within a band ranging from 0 degrees Kelvin to 4 degrees Kelvin. This would be a wide window, and on this scale, the data shows uniformity [figure a], that is to say, the CMB appears uniform all across the Universe. Narrow the detection range now to the band 2.721 to 2.729 degrees Kelvin. The data now shows temperature fluctuations of the type seen in figure b.
After some data processing to eliminate unwanted signals, the data appears as in figure c. Here one can see a lot of structure in the temperature fluctuations, of the type predicted by the inflation theory. It is this fact that makes the COBE results very important and of great significance. Of one thing you can be sure; the people in Stockholm handing out Nobel Prizes know how to pick real winners, at least most of the time!
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