OFF:UNIVERSE CREATION: "Scientists find big bang evidence" (AP)

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Scientists Find Big Bang Evidence

.c The Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) - Key elements of theories about how the universe expanded
and developed after the Big Bang have been confirmed by data from high-flying
balloons and from instruments operating in Antarctica, scientists say.

The instruments, looking deep into the universe, were able to detect minute
ripples and distortions in energy patterns within the cosmic microwave
background, a faint glow left over from the immense heat of the Big Bang.

Readings from the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer at the Center for
Astrophysical Research in Antarctica show tiny distortions in the
distribution of matter and variations in temperature just moments after the
Big Bang.

A concept, called the inflation theory, holds that these irregularities,
enlarging over time, led to the formation of all the big structures in the
universe - galaxies, stars and planets.

The new findings, said John Carlstrom, an astronomy professor at the
University of Chicago and head of the DASI team, lend strong support to the
inflation theory.

``It's always been theoretically compelling,'' said Carlstrom. ``Now it's on
very solid experimental ground.''

Carlstrom and his team presented the research Sunday at the spring meeting of
the American Physical Society.

The DASI experiment could detect ripples of temperature differences at a time
when the universe was about 400,000 years old. The universe is thought to be
about 14 billion years old. The inflation theory predicts that the
temperature differences would show up as three peaks that become
progressively fainter with time. Carlstrom said DASI detected two peaks and
suggestions of a third.

Researchers believe the data also support the idea that ordinary matter, of
which planets, stars and even people are made, accounts for only about 4.5
percent of the universe's total mass. The rest of the energy in the universe
is attributed to cold dark matter, which cannot be easily detected, and to a
force called ``dark energy,'' which is thought to be causing galaxies to
separate at a faster and faster rate.

Other experimenters, using instruments boosted up to 120,000 feet by balloons
detected variations to within 100 millionths of a degree in the cosmic
microwave background radiation temperature.

The data, from a project called Balloon Observations of Millimetric
Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics, were gathered in 1998. The data
provide more detail for cosmic microwave background temperature data first
obtained by a satellite in 1991.

Data from the experiments support the notion that the universe is flat and
not curved, an idea that would affect the path taken by light streaking
across time and space.

AP-NY-04-30-01 1324EDT