London:
Cambridge University researchers will try to cast their gaze back to the start of the universe following the last week launch of two of the most expensive scientific satellites ever built by the European Space Agency.
Planck and Herschel Observatories, worth a combined 1.7 billion pounds, are aboard the rocket and will scan the sky looking for new information about the history of the universe.
The Planck spacecraft, named after the German Nobel Laureate Max Planck, aims to answer some the biggest questions about the universe: Why is the universe so big? What happened at the Big Bang? Why is the universe so old?
To achieve this, Planck will map the sky looking at incredibly long wavelengths of light - in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will be able to take incredibly detailed measurements of what is known as the Cosmic Microwave Background.
The CMB is the remnant radiation of the Big Bang that has cooled down as the universe has expanded and now has a temperature of 2.725 degrees above absolute zero.
Within the CMB there are temperature variationsin the ancient heat energy that can give the scientists insight into the earlystructure of the universe.