Voices from Science

From NASA.com:

A JPL-developed and -built cooler on the Planck spacecraft has chilled the mission's low-frequency instrument down to its operating temperature of a frosty 20 Kelvin (minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit). The so-called hydrogen sorption cooler was turned on June 4 and achieved the target temperature of 20 Kelvin eight days later. The cooler is part of a chain of coolers that works together to ultimately chill the high-frequency instrument down to 0.1 Kelvin -- an event scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

Planck is currently on its way to its final orbit at the second Lagrange point, which is located about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth, on the opposite side of our planet from the sun. Once there, it will look back to the dawn of time to study the birth of our universe.

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From an article a read in this month's Discover magazine is that one of the things that the Planck spacecraft is trying to do is determine if there is enough distortion in the background radiation to be caused by universes outside our own. One thing that has puzzled astrophysicists is that the 3K background radiation is "lumpy." It is not smooth as would be expected after nearly 14 billion years of expansion. If you always thought 'there must be something more,' this is the craft that will try to answer that question about how the universe made and what influences it in it's evolution.