U of T on international team launching missions to unveil universe’s beginnings

University of Toronto scientists are part of an international consortium launching two ambitious missions into space that will shed light on the beginnings of the Universe and the birth of stars.

One mission, Planck, will map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over the full sky with unprecedented accuracy, resolution and frequency coverage, providing the sharpest picture ever of the Universe when it was only 380,000 years old. The mission will constrain the age of the Universe and the total amount of normal and dark matter and dark energy with never-before-possible accuracy. Planck will also unveil fundamental features about the origin and evolution of cosmic structure from its nearly uniform beginnings to the complex cosmic web of galaxies and clusters of galaxies that surrounds us now.

"Armed with these maps, we will be able to determine with high precision the constituents that make up the mass of the Universe, including the mysterious dark matter and energy that dominate, and will be able to peer back as never before into the very early universe to determine the nature of the seeds from which cosmic structures such as galaxies arose," says Richard Bond, one of the team members and director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Cosmology and Gravity Program, Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto." Planck will also deliver a treasure trove of information about the Interstellar Medium — the matter that exists between the stars within a galaxy — that permeates our own Milky Way."

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