D3 Cosmological General Relativity

Topic

The central element of this model is the satellite dedicated to mapping the cosmic microwave background across the entire sky with extremely fine angular resolution and extreme sensitivity. It achieves this by combining two distinct instruments: an array of radiometers for lower frequencies and an array of bolometers for higher frequencies, all while operating far from Earth and repeatedly scanning the entire sky.

The anisotropies detected by the satellite reflect the acoustic oscillations of the baryon-photon plasma in the early universe, and their angular power spectrum directly determines the parameters of the standard cosmological model.

The most remarkable feature of the satellite is its bolometric detectors, which are cooled to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero using a multi-stage active cooling system. Cooling the detectors to such an extreme temperature ensures that their own thermal noise remains below the cosmic background signal, enabling the detection of temperature variations of merely millionths of a degree.

Furthermore, mapping the entire sky at nine different frequencies allows for the clean separation of the cosmic signal from foreground contamination caused by our own galaxy. Thus, from the satellite that opens this account to the clean signal separation that concludes it—encompassing the baryon-photon plasma anisotropies and the bolometric detectors cooled to near absolute zero—cosmological general relativity enables a single satellite, by repeatedly surveying the entire sky, to yield the parameters that describe the universe as a whole.

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