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	Resources > News & Features > Size and Age of the Universe Other news topics  Resource Topics Earth, Moon, and the Sun  The Solar System  Space Probes and Human Exploration  Stars and Nebulae  Astronomers and Observatories  Galaxies and Cosmology  Stargazing and Star Lore Resources FAQs about Galaxies and Cosmology Astronomy Gift Shop 2008 Sky Almanac Pentax 10x50 binoculars McDonald Observatory logo cap Clues to Early Universe Could Be Tainted (From the May/June 2004 issue of StarDate magazine) Recent findings regarding the very early universe from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are being called into question by a team of astronomers from the University of Durham in England. The WMAP team has announced results — widely heralded as definitive — suggesting that areas of sky with lower microwave background temperature are the seeds of today’s galaxy clusters. Durham’s Tom Shanks said the WMAP data might be tainted by a naturally occurring phenomenon called the “Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect.” The microwave background radiation is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. Shanks said that if the hot gas in the galaxy clusters has interacted with this radiation, it could have corrupted the information before it reached WMAP’s (or any other telescope’s) detectors. -- Rebecca Johnson
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