Another launch

Not all CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) experiments get launched on a rocket.

There’s a long history of telescopes flown from balloons — huge mylar balloons floating over 100,000 feet in the air. MAXIMA and BOOMERaNG, the first experiments to map out the microwave sky on the sub-degree scales containing information about the detailed physical conditions in the Universe over the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. The Planck Satellite will close out that era of CMB experiments, by giving us a complete picture of the microwave sky down to less than a tenth of a degree.

But there is still more to be done, even beyond what Planck is capable of. By measuring the polarization of the microwave background at even higher sensitivities than Planck, we hope to observe the effects of gravitational radiation in the early Universe.

Last week, EBEX, one of a new generation of balloon-borne experiments designed specifically with this goal, had its maiden flight from Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

EBEX Launch, 6/11/09 from asad137 on Vimeo.

It’s worth remembering, of course, that even with a parachute, these telescopes hit the ground pretty hard. But these things are amazingly well-built, and the EBEX crew have managed to recover most of the hardware and all of the data. So now the team have some time to get the hardware and software ready to fly for a couple of weeks over Antarctica next year.

And let’s not forget that New Mexico is also the home of Roswell, where conspiracy theorists and other wackjobs have been trying to find the government cover-up of UFO sightings. Indeed, the EBEX balloon was spotted, but at least in neighbouring Arizona, they can tell the difference.

Meanwhile, another CMB experiment, PolarBear, is about to start its first set of important tests. PolarBear is a ground-based telescope, which means it can watch the sky for far longer than a balloon, at the cost of being at the bottom of the atmosphere and all of the extra noise that adds to the signal. So despite some hard times (especially here in the UK), the next generation of CMB experiments are on the way, hoping to probe all the way back to the epoch of inflation.