The Cosmic Microwave Background

temperature of the CMB on scales of a few degrees of sky, just the level that many theorists had been predicting. This "holy grail" of cosmology was so profound that the principal investigator of CoBE referred to the temperature map as "the face of God." At last, primordial structures from which the galaxies arose had been detected.

The future of CMB science is brighter than ever. Two very exciting space missions are being built for even better mapping of the primordial CMB fluctuations. MAP, built principally at Princeton University and Goddard Space Flight Center, will map the fluctuations down the angular scales of 20 arcminutes. For the first time, it will reveal the physics of the primordial plasma, and tightly constrain the size and density of the Universe. MAP is set to launch in November 2000 and return the first full sky maps after just a few months.

Planck, set to launch in 2008, is being built principally by Cambridge University and the European Space Agency. It will push the scales down to a few arcminutes and allow even tighter constraints on the physics of the early universe.

These two missions have the potential to resolve at last the size and density of the universe and quantify in great detail the types of structures from which galaxies like our own Milky Way arose.

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