Detecting microwaves

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006
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FIRAS – Far Infrared Absolute Spectrometer – was the instrument on board COBE that registered the blackbody spectrum of the microwave background radiation. The radiation lies in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum and has a wavelength of only a few millimeters. The radiation was gathered by FIRAS in a cone-shaped instrument which compared the wavelength spectrum of the collected radiation with a known (reference) blackbody spectrum. The collected microwave background radiation turned out to have a perfect blackbody spectrum.

 

 

Contents:
| Introduction – The first light in the Universe  | Clues to where matter began to accumulate | Detecting microwaves | Determining differences in temperature | Timeline | Further reading | Credits |
  Nobel Poster from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, web adapted by Nobel Web AB.

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