The Afterglow of Creation

Cosmic Microwave Background - The Afterglow of Creation.

The ‘Afterglow of Creation’ – commonly known as the Cosmic Background Radiation – is the left-over heat from the fireball of the Big Bang in which the Universe was born 13.7 billion years ago.
It provides a unique insight into our Universe’s ******y - a ‘baby photo’ described somewhat dramatically by Stephen Hawking as ‘the discovery of the century, if not of all time’ and by experimentalist and Nobel Prize winner George Smoot as ‘like seeing the face of God’.



Here are a few more little known facts about the Cosmic Background Radiation:



1. It’s the oldest fossil in Creation
It comes from a time just 380,000 years after the Universe burst into being.



2. It’s the coldest thing in the Universe
It is has been cooled by the expansion of the Universe to just 2.725 degree above absolute zero – the lowest possible temperature – so it appears not as visible light but stretched out into short-wavelength radio waves, principally microwaves.



3. It carries with it a ‘baby photo’ of the Universe. 
The splotches on the ‘photo’ show the locations where the smooth stuff of the Big Bang fireball is for the first time beginning to curdle into clusters of Galaxies.



4. It accounts for 99.9 % of all the particles of light in the Universe
. Remarkably, only 0.1 per cent is tied up in the light from the Stars and Nebulae and Galaxies. If you were in Space with ‘magic glasses’ that showed microwaves, you would see the whole of the Universe glowing brightly with the Big Bang Afterglow just as if you were inside a light bulb.



5. It’s in the air around you - even in the room where you are now. 
It had absolutely nowhere to go since it was bottled up in the Universe, and the Universe, by definition, is all there is. Every cubic centimetre of space is currently being traversed by 300 photons from the big bang. Tune your TV between the stations and about 1% of the static on the screen is from the Big Bang fireball.