Planck Results

 Congratulations to the Planck Team and to our colleague Julien Lesgourgues for their remarkable study of the temperature fluctuations of the CMB. This study has now given us the oldest map of the Universe, going back 400,000 years after the Big Bang, a snapshot with exceptional detail that will remain a reference for cosmological analyses. We now have a very accurate reconstruction of the composition of the "cosmic soup" which, in combination with other cosmological observables, offers a remarkably simple and coherent framework within the "standard cosmological model" thus providing very interesting constraints on relevant aspects of particle physics such as the number and the mass of neutrinos.

This wealth of data also revealed a few anomalies. In the months and years ahead, we will learn from these analyses whether we should go beyond the standard cosmological model. Furthermore, other ongoing analyses of the data address the polarization of the radiation. This will improve the chances of detecting other phenomena such as the presence of a diffuse background of gravitational waves.