Opening A New Window to the Early Universe

Abstract

DASI has ended a 34-year quest to detect the CMB polarization, sounding the starting gun for a new race to peer further back in time, with more precision than ever before. Many more CMB polarization experiments are in progress or planned. NASA's recently launched Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) should detect the large-angle polarization induced by early star formation. This should be followed by increasingly precise ground and balloon experiments leading to the Launch of the European Space Agency's Planck satellite in 2007. If the recent past is any indication, studies of the CMB will continue to advance cosmology, even after Planck.