Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Cosmology

Filling in the background

Nature volume 422, pages 26–27 (2003)Cite this article

Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe reveal the cosmic microwave background in more detail than ever before. But will cosmology become a victim of its own success?

Not so long ago, cosmology was, half-jokingly, thought of as “a search for two numbers”. The numbers in question were the Hubble constant, which measures the rate at which the Universe is expanding, and the energy density, measured in terms of the critical density for which the Universe is flat (that is, when space has zero curvature). What was worse, many of the field's own practitioners despaired of determining these numbers with any real precision. The difficulty of controlling systematic errors in conventional observations of objects at cosmological distances presented a daunting obstacle.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

NASA/WMAP SCIENCE TEAM

References

  1. Smoot, G. et al. Astrophys. J. 396, L1–L4 (1992).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Bennett, C. L. et al. Preprint astro-ph/0302207 at <http://arXiv.org> (2003).

  3. http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/map_bibliography.html

  4. Hu, W. & Dodelson, S. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 40, 171–216 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Leitch, E. M. et al. Nature 420, 763–771 (2002).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Kovac, J. M. et al. Nature 420, 772–787 (2002).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, 5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Sean Carroll

Authors
  1. Sean Carroll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sean Carroll.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Carroll, S. Filling in the background. Nature 422, 26–27 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/422026a

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/422026a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing