ALMA’s_Hole_in_the_Universe.jpg
![File:ALMA’s Hole in the Universe.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/ALMA%E2%80%99s_Hole_in_the_Universe.jpg/643px-ALMA%E2%80%99s_Hole_in_the_Universe.jpg)
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Summary
Description ALMA’s Hole in the Universe.jpg |
English:
The events surrounding the Big Bang were so cataclysmic that they left an indelible imprint on the fabric of the cosmos. We can detect these scars today by observing the oldest light in the Universe. As it was created nearly 14 billion years ago, this light — which exists now as weak microwave radiation and is thus named the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — has now expanded to permeate the entire cosmos, filling it with detectable photons. The CMB can be used to probe the cosmos via something known as the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect, which was first observed over 30 years ago. We detect the CMB here on Earth when its constituent microwave photons travel to us through space. On their journey to us, they can pass through galaxy clusters that contain high-energy electrons. These electrons give the photons a tiny boost of energy. Detecting these boosted photons through our telescopes is challenging but important — they can help astronomers to understand some of the fundamental properties of the Universe, such as the location and distribution of dense galaxy clusters. This image shows the first measurements of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile (in blue). Astronomers combined data from ALMA’s 7- and 12-metre antennas to produce the sharpest possible image. The target was one of the most massive known galaxy clusters, RX J1347.5–1145, the centre of which shows up here in the dark “hole” in the ALMA observations. The energy distribution of the CMB photons shifts and appears as a temperature decrease at the wavelength observed by ALMA, hence a dark patch is observed in this image at the location of the cluster. Links ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week
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Date | |
Source | https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1708a/ |
Author | ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/T. Kitayama (Toho University, Japan)/ESA/Hubble & NASA |
Licensing
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This image was produced by the
ALMA Observatory
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Unless specifically noted, the images and videos distributed from the public ALMA websites ( www.almaobservatory.org , www.alma.cl , and kids.alma.cl ) along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible. Details on how to interpret this are given below for those who need further explanation. See the ALMA copyright notice for complete information. Conditions :
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This file is licensed under the
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ALMA
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