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Mission Complete! WMAP In 'Graveyard Orbit'
astroengine writes "The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has, quite literally, changed our view of the Universe. And after nine years of mapping the slight temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, its job is done and NASA has commanded the probe to fire itself into a 'graveyard orbit' around the sun. WMAP measured the most precise age of the universe (13.75 billion years), discovered more evidence supporting dark energy and dark matter theories, and found one or two mysteries along the way."
What if the cosmic background "warmth" which hovers just above 2 Kelvin isn't the remnants of the Big Bang but rather a physical phenomenon produced by some more general
What you need to understand is that what you said, while sounding philosophical to the uneducated is gibberish. To a scientist what you said sounds something like "What if what I thought was my hand was actually an ardvaark in disguise". There are specific properties/features of the CMB that require it to be left over radiation from the Big Bang. Of course to understand this you also need to understand the Big Bang itself and why we'd collectively believe something so counter-intuitive as the universe beginning from a singularity. In other words you need to read your science historyf or the last couple of hundred years.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The prior orbit was at the L2 point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#L2 one of the very few stable points in the solar system. Leaving WMAP there would be a bad idea because it makes a very nice spot become more hazardous. We're already having serious trouble with spacejunk in Earth orbit. There's no good reason to star trashing up the rest of the system also.