🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1iqf5lINNilr@manuel.anu.edu.au>, markus@octavia.anu.edu.au (Markus Buchhorn) writes:
> 
> richmond@spiff.Princeton.EDU (Stupendous Man) writes:
> 
>>   Speaking of astronomy, I read the article in today's (Friday's) NY Times
>> on a presentation of COBE results from the AAS meeting.  No one here at
>> Princeton could figure out what the article was saying.  It SEEMED to
>> say something like "COBE measurements of the microwave spectrum show 
>> a really, really good fit to a blackbody spectrum.  Therefore, nothing
>> exciting happened in the universe after the BB for at least one year."
>> Can someone at the AAS meeting make things more clear?
>> 
> 
> The AAS result says that they saw a triangle, and it was a very smooth
> triangle - no bumps at other temperatures, down to some very small level. Hence,
> if there were other events at a later time they were *very very* small.
> 
> Does that help to make it clearer ?  {And to those who know, did I get 
> it right ? :-) }
> 

Soudns about right, but as another who wasn't at the meeting, the important
thing is how small would those other triangles (I mean BBs) be for COBE not to
have seen them? The original result released at the 1990 AAS had a limit of
about 1% of the CBR power. This has presumeably got smaller, but how much? As
someone who's trying to detect things that would contribute to small
fluctuations in the CBR at various wavelengths this is quite important!

-- 
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Dave Clements, Oxford University Astrophysics Department
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clements @ uk.ac.ox.vax			|  Umberto Eco is the *real* Comte de
dlc      @ uk.ac.ox.astro		|           Saint Germain...
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