ESA

This all-sky map from the Planck probe charts the imprint of the big bang's cosmic afterglow.

The Planck cosmology probe has forced scientists to revise their estimates of the universe's age and the cosmic balance of matter and dark energy — and now it's led a physicist to remix the sound of the big bang as well.

The new big-bang sound was created over the weekend by John Cramer, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Washington. The audio file follows up on Cramer's decade-old audio rendition of the big bang, which was based on data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP.

Planck and WMAP both charted subtle variations in the all-sky cosmic microwave background, a super-faint glow of stretched-out radiation from a time when the universe was 380,000 years old. The variations amount to mere millionths of a degree in temperature, but they record the imprint of fluctuations left behind by the big bang.

Cramer released his original WMAP big-bang sound 10 years ago, but the Planck readings were so much better that a remix was in order.

"The new frequency spectrum goes to much higher frequencies than did the WMAP analysis, and therefore offers a more 'high-fidelity' rendition of the Sound of the Big Bang," Cramer explained on a Web page providing the updated sound files. We're featuring the 20-second version, but you can download versions that play out for as long as 500 seconds.

"I recommend the 100-second version, but you can choose for yourself," Cramer said.

The sound follows the curves in Planck data to reflect the propagation of pressure waves through the medium of the early universe during the first 760,000 years of its evolution. The time scale has been speeded up astronomically, of course, and Cramer figures that the frequency has been scaled up by a factor of 100 septillion (that's a 1 followed by 26 zeroes).

"The actual Big Bang frequencies, which had wavelengths on the order of a fraction of the size of the universe, were far too low to be heard by humans (even had any been around)," Cramer explained.

Ten years ago, Cramer said that when he played the sound of the WMAP data on his computer, his dogs pricked up their ears and listened attentively. "There was less reaction from the dogs this time, but there was some barking when the big bang sound initially came on," Cramer told NBC News in an email.

Sharp-eared listeners with a good sound system will notice that the Planck remix doesn't rattle the speakers as much as the WMAP original does. "The big bang sound is different because of the higher frequency components from Planck, and because I decided to shift the frequency scale factor to make less bass (since not everyone has a sub-woofer on their PC)," Cramer said.

In addition to the big-bang sound, Cramer has several unorthodox claims to scientific fame, including his long-running column for Analog magazine; his science-fiction novels, "Twistor" and "Einstein's Bridge"; and his experiment to find out whether quantum mechanics would allow for backward causality.

Cramer said his retrocausality experiment is currently in limbo. He has always said that there might be some subtle quantum effect that would rule out backward causality, and so far that's been the case.

"The Mark II version of the retrocausality experiment has concluded for now, defeated by detector noise," he said in his email. "I'm currently in the process of writing a new pre-proposal (to a government organization I won't name) seeking funding for a Mark III version of the experiment.  It would use noise-free superconducting-transition single photon detectors instead of the too-noisy avalanche photodiodes, would be down-scaled in wavelength a bit so that the entangled photon pairs would be at wavelengths matching the communication industry standard wavelengths for fiber optics, and would use two switched single-mode fiber optic Mach-Zehnder interferometers instead of lenses, prisms and mirrors on an optics table.  Said organization is interested because there is the possibility of zero-time-delay communication with distant space missions."

Read that last sentence again: Someone in the government is interested in zero-time-delay communication with distant space missions. Albert Einstein's theories suggest that information can't be transmitted any faster than the speed of light, but Einstein himself said quantum mechanics might open the door for "spooky action at a distance." Zero-time-delay communication certainly sounds spooky — but is it possible? Stay tuned.

Scott Eklund / Seattle P-I file

University of Washington physicist John Cramer, seen here in a 2007 photo, has been working on a laser experiment to test whether causality can work backward in time.

More weird physics:

• Math twisted for faster-than-light travel
• Bizarre quantum physics may play role in life
• New view: Big bang was a big crystallization

Audio clips: Copyright 2013 John G. Cramer.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

ESA

The Planck mission has produced the most detailed all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

The European-led team behind the Planck cosmology probe on Thursday released the mission's first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background — a post-big-bang "baby picture" that suggests our universe is about 100 million years older than scientists thought.

The map traces subtle fluctuations in temperature that were imprinted on the deep sky when the cosmos was just 370,000 years old. Scientists say the imprint reflects ripples that arose as early as the first nonillionth of a second of the universe's existence. These ripples are thought to have given rise to today's vast cosmic web of galaxy clusters and dark matter.

"To a cosmologist, this map is a gold mine of information," University of Cambridge astrophysicist George Efstathiou, a member of the Planck science team, said during a European Space Agency news conference in Paris. He joked that not long ago, cosmologists might have "given up their children" to have such a map in their hands.

The $900 million (€700 million) Planck probe was launched on a European Ariane 5 rocket in 2009, along with the infrared-sensitive Herschel space telescope. Planck produced its first all-sky radiation map in 2010. Since then, scientists have fine-tuned the image to remove the bright emissions from the Milky Way and other foreground sources, leaving only the background radiation.

Two NASA satellites — the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, also known as COBE and WMAP — produced earlier versions of the baby picture. Those findings determined that the universe is made up of 4.5 percent ordinary matter, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 72.8 percent dark energy. The results also showed that the universe is geometrically "flat" to a margin of error of 0.4 percent, and helped scientists estimate the universe's age at 13.7 billion years.

NASA

Planck's map of the cosmic microwave background has significantly higher resolution than the readings that were made during previous missions such as COBE and WMAP, as shown in this graphic.

Planck can produce cosmological maps with three times the resolution of WMAP, and at least 10 times the temperature sensitivity. As a result, the estimates of the universe's age and composition have undergone some additional fine tuning. Planck's readings indicate that the universe's expansion rate is slower than previously thought — which means the universe is older.

Planck's estimate for the age of the universe is 13.82 billion years.

Martin White, a member of the Planck team from the University of California at Berkeley, told NBC News that Planck's estimate narrowed down the error bars on previous estimates. "In that sense, it's very consistent, but much more precise," he said.

The Planck team's breakdown of the universe's constituents is 4.9 percent ordinary matter, 26.8 percent dark matter and 68.3 percent dark energy, he said. "There's less stuff that we don't understand, by a tiny amount," Efstathiou said. As a result of the shift toward more matter and less dark energy, "an awful lot of people are going to be revising their calculations," White said.

Efstathiou said the Planck data also pointed to some "strange features" in the cosmic microwave background that may point to new frontiers in physics, including an unexplained dip at one point of the power spectrum, and an unusual distribution of large-scale fluctuations that roughly followed the plane of the solar system.

"Why characteristics of the CMB should relate to our solar system is not understood. ... I was explicitly told not to say anything about God in this talk — which I've just violated," Efstathiou said half-jokingly.

ESA

This graphic highlights anomalies seen in the Planck data. One anomaly is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky (indicated by the curved line), with slightly higher average temperatures in the southern ecliptic hemisphere and slightly lower average temperatures in the northern ecliptic hemisphere. This runs counter to the mainstream view that the universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look. There is also a cold spot that extends over a patch of sky that is much larger than expected (circled). The anomalous regions have been enhanced here to make them more clearly visible.

Planck's data set should help scientists do a reality check on many of the hypotheses proposed by cosmologists, including the view that the universe underwent rapid and far-reaching inflation in the first moments of its existence, as well as the claim that there are six or seven spatial dimensions in addition to the three we perceive.

An initial reading of the data appears to favor the simple models for the inflationary big bang, and rule out a lot of the complex models. "We think that they will be facing a dead end," said Krzysztof Gorski, a member of the Planck team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain noted that so far, the mission has delivered just half of the data it's expected to produce. The rest of the data is scheduled to come out in 2014 and 2015. "Today is not the end of the story," he told reporters. Efstathiou put it another way, paraphrasing one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's best-known catchphrases: "We'll be back."

More about cosmology:

• WMAP scientists unveil their best 'baby picture'
• Japanese string theorists simulate big bang
• Scrunched-up dimensions untangled

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:49 AM EDT

ESA / NASA / JPL-Caltech

This map illustrates the numerous star-forming clouds, called cold cores, that Planck observed throughout our Milky Way galaxy. Planck, a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation, detected around 10,000 of these cores, thousands of which had never been seen before.

It'll be another couple of years before the European Space Agency's Planck probe delivers its baby picture of the universe, but in the meantime, the long-wavelength surveyor has pinpointed thousands of hot spots (and cold spots) worth watching.

The hot spots are huge galaxy clusters — including one cluster that holds the equivalent of a quadrillion stars, making it one of the most massive structures ever seen in the universe. The cold spots are clouds of chilly gas and dust within our own galaxy that are on the verge of forming their first stars.

Identifying these spots isn't the main reason for the billion-dollar Planck mission, which was launched in May 2009 along with the Herschel Space Telescope. Planck's main goal is to chart the cosmic background radiation in unprecedented detail, in wavelengths ranging from the infrared to the radio spectrum. The mission is expected to produce a map of the cosmic "afterglow" from just 380,000 years after the big bang, at a resolution that's three times bettern than the map produced by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe in 2003.

Such maps provide scientists with their best guide to the infant universe's inflationary expansion. But before scientists can chart the cosmic background radiation, they have to retouch Planck's picture to remove all the "foreground" radiation — that is, all the stars, galaxies and pockets of gas and dust that lent their glow to the all-sky survey. These radiation sources are like "bugs on the windshield," Charles Lawrence of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the U.S. project scientist for the Planck mission, told journalists today at the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting in Seattle.

In Planck's case, even the bugs are valuable. The cold spots and the hot spots were the headliners for today's release of the mission's first scientific results. "So today, we're all entomologists," Lawrence joked.

Planck's data catalog includes about 10,000 so-called "cold cores," thousands of which are newly discovered. The dark, dense, dusty clouds are expected to fall in on themselves due to gravitational forces, and squeeze stars into existence. "These are the equivalent of a mother's womb before anything has happened," George Helou, a member of the Planck team, said at the Seattle briefing.

Temperatures in the cores approach absolute zero — to be precise, between 7 and 17 Kelvin, or as low as minus-447 degrees Fahrenheit. To measure such temperatures, the Planck detectors had to be chilled to 0.1 Kelvin, or a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Helou said astronomers will be studying all those cold cores to come up with a model explaining how the frigid wombs give birth to hot, young stars.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Planck team has identified 189 galaxy clusters so far, including 20 that have never been seen before. Those previously undetected clusters are being confirmed by cross-checking X-ray observations from ESA's XMM-Newton orbiting observatory.

ESA

The newly detected galaxy supercluster PLCK G214.6+37.0 was identified in imagery from the Planck probe (left), and its existence was confirmed by checking X-ray imagery from the XMM-Newton observatory (right).

Studying the clusters could yield new insights into the evolution of galaxies, as well as the effects of dark matter and dark energy. The data from Planck confirm the view that galaxies form along a network of dense regions that spread across empty space like the threads of a spider web.

"They sit in the knots of the cosmic web," said Elena Pierpaoli, a Planck team member from the University of Southern California.

Planck's first findings are the focus of a major scientific conference in Paris this week, based on 25 scientific papers that have been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. As impressive as all that sounds, it's just "the tip of the scientific iceberg," David Southworth, ESA's director fo science and robotic exploration, said in a statement released today.

"This catalog contains the raw material for many more discoveries," Southworth said. "Even then, we haven't got to the real treasure yet, the cosmic microwave background itself."

That big reveal is scheduled for the next data release ... in January 2013.

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