Subj : Daily APOD Report To : All From : Ben Ritchey Date : Sun Jul 22 2018 10:18:10 APOD: 2018 July 22 - Planck Maps the Microwave Background Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! [1] Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2018 July 22 [2] Planck Maps the Microwave Background Image Credit: European Space Agency [3] , Planck Collaboration [4] Explanation: What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite [5] from 2009 to 2013 to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest optical surface [6] known -- the background sky when our universe first became transparent [7] to light. Visible in all directions, this cosmic microwave background [8] is a complex tapestry that could only show the hot and cold patterns [9] observed were the universe to be composed of specific types of energy [10] that evolved in specific ways. The final results [11] , reported last week [12] , confirm again that most of our universe is mostly composed of mysterious and unfamiliar dark energy [13] , and that even most of the remaining matter energy is strangely dark [14] . Additionally, the "final" 2018 Planck data impressively peg [15] the age of the universe at about 13.8 billion years and the local expansion rate [16] -- called the Hubble constant -- at 67.4 (+/- 0.5) km/sec/Mpc. Oddly, this early-universe determined Hubble constant [17] is slightly lower than that determined by other methods in the late-universe [18] , creating a tension [19] that is causing much discussion [20] and speculation [21] . Tomorrow's picture: Fermi Science Finals [22] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- < [23] | Archive [24] | Submissions [25] | Index [26] | Search [27] | Calendar [28] | RSS [29] | Education [30] | About APOD [31] | Discuss [32] | > [33] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff [34] (MTU [35] ) & Jerry Bonnell [36] (UMCP [37] ) NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply [38] . NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices [39] A service of: ASD [40] at NASA [41] / GSFC [42] & Michigan Tech. U. [43] ---------- Site notes: [1] archivepix.html [2] image/1807/CMB2018_Planck_4672.jpg [3] http://www.esa.int/ [4] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_satellite [6] ap001029.html [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombination_%28cosmology%29 [8] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CMB.html [9] http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16873 [10] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AmJPh..76..265N [11] https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.06209 [12] https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/planck [13] https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy [14] ap111003.html [15] http://sci.esa.int/planck/ 60499-from-an-almost-perfect-universe-to-the-best-of-both-worlds/ [16] http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_expansion.html [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law [18] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018ApJ...861..126R [19] https://www.barkbusters.co.uk/images/articles/ 7a4120f095480e9f2a2ad2a165d90313.jpg [20] https://astrobites.org/2017/10/13/the-hubble-constants/ [21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/03/ scientists-still-dont-know-how-fast-the-universe-is-expanding/ [22] ap180723.html [23] ap180721.html [24] archivepix.html [25] lib/apsubmit2015.html [26] lib/aptree.html [27] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search [28] calendar/allyears.html [29] /apod.rss [30] lib/edlinks.html [31] lib/about_apod.html [32] http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=180722 [33] ap180723.html [34] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html [35] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/ [36] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/bonnell.html [37] http://www.astro.umd.edu/ [38] lib/about_apod.html#srapply [39] https://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/HP_Privacy.html [40] https://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/ [41] https://www.nasa.gov/ [42] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ [43] http://www.mtu.edu/ --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 (Windows/32) * Origin: FIDONet - The Positronium Repository (1:393/68) .