AN ASTROPHYSICS experiment designed to tell us about the cosmic microwave
background may scupper one of the central tenets of modern cosmology—that
the Universe is crammed full of dark matter.
The Boomerang experiment surveyed the cosmos from a balloon above Antarctica,
and its results reported earlier this year provided the most detailed map yet of
the microwave background—photons that echo the big bang. The conclusion
was that the Universe is “flat”: finely balanced between expanding forever or
collapsing back into a “big crunch”. But the Boomerang data may be telling us
something else too.
Maps of the background…
