Finnish Planck Surveyor Consortium
We participate in the LFI consortium of the Planck
Surveyor Mission. The Consortium is partly funded by the National Technology
Agency TEKES and the Academy
of Finland sponsored
Antares programme.
Consortium leaders:
Kari Enqvist (Kari.Enqvist@Helsinki.fi)
Jussi Tuovinen (Jussi.Tuovinen@vtt.fi)
Research teams:
Planck Surveyor Mission
is an ESA
satellite. Its main operational purpose is to provide a detailed temperature
map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The temperature fluctuations
of the microwave background reflect the properties of matter at the time
of recombination, about 300 000 years after the Big Bang. In addition to
the expansion rate and the density of the universe, the shape of the temperature
fluctuation spectrum is determined by the hydrodynamical properties of
matter. Sound and density waves will show up as so called acoustic peaks,
the properties of which allow a precise determination of the relative amounts
of the photons, baryons and the yet unknown dark matter. The matter density
will also tell us if the expansion of the universe will continue forever,
or whether it will eventually start to collapse. The age of the universe,
as well as the value of the Hubble parameter, can also be extracted from
the temperature map. The shape of the initial density perturbation spectrum
can then be found out, and the result can be compared with e.g. the predictions
of the popular cosmic inflation models. In this way Planck will open up
a window to the very earliest times in the history of the universe and
provided an unique testing ground for variour particle physics models.