Wiktionary
n. (context astronomy English) The faint, uniform flux of microwave radiation that permeates all space and is the redshifted residual effect of the Big Bang
WordNet
n. (cosmology) the cooled remnant of the hot big bang that fills the entire universe and can be observed today with an average temperature of about 2.725 kelvin [syn: CBR, cosmic microwave background radiation, CMBR, cosmic microwave background, CMB]
Wikipedia
Cosmic background radiation is electromagnetic radiation from the sky with no discernible source. The origin of this radiation depends on the region of the spectrum that is observed. One component is the cosmic microwave background radiation. This component is redshifted photons that have freely streamed from an epoch when the Universe became transparent for the first time to radiation. Its discovery and detailed observations of its properties are considered one of the major confirmations of the Big Bang. The discovery (by chance in 1965) of the cosmic background radiation suggests that the early universe was dominated by a radiation field, a field of extremely high temperature and pressure.
The Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect shows the phenomena of radiant cosmic background radiation interacting with "electron" clouds distorting the spectrum of the radiation.
There is also background radiation in the infrared, x-rays, etc., with different causes, and they can sometimes be resolved into an individual source. See cosmic infrared background and X-ray background. See also cosmic neutrino background and extragalactic background light.
Usage examples of "cosmic background radiation".
I've got some news for you: the cosmic background radiation is getting hotter.
He slips his glasses on, takes the universe off hold, and tells it to take him for a long walk while he catches up on the latest on the tensor-mode gravitational waves in the cosmic background radiation (which, it is theorized, may be waste heat generated by irreversible computational processes back during the inflationary epoch.
In detecting the cosmic background radiation, in counting quasars, in searching for intelligent signals from space, radio astronomers are dealing with amounts of energy that are barely there at all.
The world would need additional decades, and the inadvertent discovery of cosmic background radiation by Penzias and Wilson at their hissing antenna in New Jersey, before the Big Bang would begin to move from interesting idea to established theory.
Astronomers can measure the temperature of the cosmic background radiation, and they do indeed get 3°.
High-altitude balloons are still being launched, including platforms carrying cosmic ray sensors, optical and infrared telescopes, radio receivers probing the cosmic background radiation, and other instruments above most of the Earth's atmosphere.
The cosmic background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson, at 2.
For some reason of his own he had been observing the region around Urstar at the wavelength of the cosmic background radiation.
In some grand metaconcert as diffuse and exiguous as the cosmic background radiation?
The universe was old enough that the first light had been scattered and cooled so that he should see the same radiation in all directions, cosmic background radiation, hotter than in his old universe.
Only one seldom-used instrument, a low-resolution imaging device normally used to measure cosmic background radiation, admitted a presence.
In our epoch, the temperature of this cosmic background radiation has reached 2.
They needed special suits outside the hull to withstand cosmic background radiation.
The cosmic background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson is nothing more than the radiation at the time when it decoupled from matter, now grown old.
If Buzzo or Nishide can come up with a TOE in which the whole universe is more or less implicit in a detailed description of the Big Bang-details deduced, right here and now, from observations of helium abundance, galactic clustering, the cosmic background radiation, and so on-no one accuses them of circular logic.