COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cosmic microwave background mean? 

• COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND (noun)
  The noun COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND has 1 sense:

1. (cosmology) the cooled remnant of the hot big bang that fills the entire universe and can be observed today with an average temperature of about 2.725 kelvin

  Familiarity information: COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(cosmology) the cooled remnant of the hot big bang that fills the entire universe and can be observed today with an average temperature of about 2.725 kelvin

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

CBR; CMB; CMBR; cosmic background radiation; cosmic microwave background; cosmic microwave background radiation

Hypernyms ("cosmic microwave background" is a kind of...):

cosmic radiation (radiation coming from outside the solar system)

Domain category:

cosmogeny; cosmogony; cosmology (the branch of astrophysics that studies the origin and evolution and structure of the universe)

 Context examples 

Separate measurements from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which maps the cosmic microwave background, predicted that the Hubble constant value should now be 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

(Measuring Growth of Universe Reveals a Mystery, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

ESA's Planck satellite, a mission with significant participation from NASA, has revealed that the first stars in the universe started forming later than previous observations of the cosmic microwave background indicated.

(First Stars Formed Later Than We Thought, NASA)

Because telescopes cannot see them, though, astronomers have been hunting for indirect evidence, such as a tell-tale change in the background electromagnetic radiation that permeates the universe, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

(Astronomers detect ancient signal from first stars in universe, National Science Foundation)

Canadian-US scientist James Peebles won his half of the prize for his work in predicting cosmic microwave background and creating a theoretical framework from which other scientists have been able to calculate the age and structure of the universe, including the calculation that the universe is 95% dark matter and dark energy.

(Swedish academy announces 2019 Nobel Prize winners in physics, Wikinews)

The results are especially important to the scientific community because they mark the first time that observations from the more recent universe — the adult universe — by a technique called gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering, have yielded results as precise as those from the cosmic microwave background radiation — light from the infant universe.

(New Clues to Universe's Structure Revealed, NASA)