Excerpts from an article in this week's Science section, NY Times:

For Astronomers, Big Bang Confirmation

February 12, 2003
By DENNIS OVERBYE

The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the
universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory
in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early
history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday.

It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos,
only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a
billion years earlier than theorists had thought, and gives
a first tantalizing hint at the physics of the "dynamite"
behind the Big Bang.

Astronomers said the map results lent impressive support to
the strange picture that has emerged recently: the universe
is expanding at an ever-faster rate, pushed apart by a
mysterious "dark energy."
. . .

In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus
or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a
margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4
percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter - presumably
undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big
Bang - and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically
"flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over
cosmic scales.
. . .

The map, compiled by a satellite called the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe, shows the slight temperature
variations in a haze of radio microwaves believed to be the
remains of the fires of the Big Bang. Cosmologists said the
map would serve as the basis for studying the universe for
the rest of the decade.

"We have laid the cornerstone of a unified coherent theory
of the cosmos," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett, an astronomer
at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who
led an international team that built the satellite and
analyzed the results.
. . .

Dr. David N. Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and member
of the WMAP team, said: "We've answered the set of
questions that have driven the field of cosmology for the
last two decades. How many atoms in the universe? How old
is the universe?"
[end quote]

It's nice to see the cosmologists are finally catching up with my poem (see blog entry for 2/5 on the "W map"). Henry & Bluejay start their journey from the Doyle Observatory, a cute little galactic dome (built in the early 1900s, still in use) at the summit of Hope St. in Providence.

"Donshu know you zigshaggin', Henrah? Zigshaggin yo own black rizebury W" (or something like that).