If we can look back in time to almost 14 billion years, before the first galaxies were
being assembled, then what is there to see?
We see the Cosmic Background Radiation, the afterglow of
the Big Bang. This light was released when the universe became transparent, when it
was only about 300,000 years old.
The universe has now cooled to a temperature of 2.76 degrees Celsius
above absolute zero!
The temperature variations shown are only a few 100 micro-degrees Celsius.
They mark the density fluctuations that will someday become galaxies
and clusters of galaxies.
back | next | index