The Cosmic Microwave Background
Subsections
2.1 Prologue: Black Bodies
2.1.1 Blackbody Radiation
2.1.2 Effect of Redshift
2.1.3 The temperature of space
2.2 The Discovery of the CMB
2.2.1 A temperature with a very restricted meaning
2.2.2 Ylem and after
2.2.3 The horn
2.3 The Early History of the Universe
2.3.1 The primordial heat bath
2.3.2 The Big Freeze
2.3.3 Nucleosynthesis
2.3.4 The origin of the Cosmic Microwave Background
2.4 The CMB and the history of the Universe
2.4.1 The spectrum of the CMB
2.4.2 How far away is the CMB?
2.4.3 What can we learn from the CMB spectrum?
2.5 The CMB and the geometry of the Universe
2.5.1 How accurate is the Cosmological Principle?
2.5.2 Topology
2.5.3 Inflation
2.6 The formation of structure in the Universe
2.6.1 Gravitational Runaway
2.6.2 Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background
2.6.3 Observing CMB fluctuations: the Race for the Acoustic Peaks
2.6.4 Structure then and now
2.6.5
MAP
and
Planck
: towards Precision Cosmology
2.7 Epilogue: a year in CMB science
2.8 Further Reading