‘13.8 bn years in one image’: The clearest ‘Baby Picture’ of the Cosmos yet
Produced by: Manoj Kumar
Universe’s Baby Pictures
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) captured the clearest-ever images of the universe just 380,000 years after the Big Bang, revealing its first steps toward forming stars and galaxies.
Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration.
Cosmic Fossil Light
ACT’s images of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) show the earliest light in the universe, validating the standard model of cosmology with unprecedented precision.
Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration.
Gas Clouds in Motion
The telescope tracked ancient hydrogen and helium gases moving under gravity’s pull, showing how the first stars and galaxies began to take shape.
Sharper Than Planck
With five times the resolution of the Planck Space Telescope, ACT provided the most detailed view of the CMB’s polarization patterns, crucial for understanding cosmic evolution.
Credit : ESA
Universe’s Age Confirmed
New ACT data refines the age of the universe to 13.8 billion years, with an uncertainty of just 0.1%, matching previous estimates with stunning accuracy.
Representative pic
Hubble Tension Remains
Despite its breakthroughs, ACT failed to resolve the Hubble tension, a major mystery about why different methods yield conflicting expansion rates for the universe.
Dark Matter & Energy Measured
The findings confirm that the universe’s mass equals 2 trillion trillion suns, with 75% dark energy, 25% dark matter, and just 5% ordinary matter—mostly hydrogen and helium.
Representative pic
Cosmic Ripples Locked in Time
Matter in the infant universe sent out waves like ripples on a pond, which became frozen into the CMB, helping astronomers track the universe’s expansion history.
Representative pic
New Observatories Ahead
With ACT now decommissioned, astronomers are turning to the Simons Observatory, a next-gen telescope in Chile, for even deeper cosmic insights.