Scientific Seminars

The baby universe seen by Planck

Aniello Mennella
Universita` di Milano

2013-09-10    14:00    Brera - Cupola Fiore

After four years of continuous and successful operations the Planck community released the most beautiful image of the baby universe ever seen. Planck instruments, the most complex array of microwave detectors ever launched to space, have mapped the tiny intensity anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over the full sky in nine frequency bands with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. This signal traces the matter density fluctuations of the universe when it was only 380.000 years old, well before gravitational collapse started forming stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters. In my talk I will review the data and main results obtained from the first Planck cosmology release. These results beautifully confirm the standard LCDM model and, on the other hand, reveal "anomalies" that could be the hint of new, unknown physical processes.