“From this map we measured basic properties of the Universe (technically: cosmological parameters) such as its composition, age etc.”

The paper presents the interpretation of new data from the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite. These results are also interpreted in the context of other existing data sets.

The new data represent a major advance for Cosmic Microwave Background studies. The methodology is presented in two companion papers.

The paper presents the analysis of the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). WMAP gave us the most detailed, full-sky map of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the "echo" of the big bang. From this map we measured basic properties of the Universe (technically: cosmological parameters) such as its composition, age, etc. The paper shows that a simple cosmological model with only a handful of "cosmological parameters" describes well not only WMAP data but also a large number of other astronomical observations. By combining WMAP data with other external data sets, we also constrained physical parameters such as neutrino mass, cosmological constant, etc.

I have always been fascinated with cosmology. In 2002 I had been directly working on some of the external data sets—see above—(in particular the 2dF galaxy redshift survey) for a while. I was a postdoc at Princeton (one of the WMAP institutions) in the spring of 2002 when I was invited to join the WMAP science team and to participate in the analysis.