This artist's view shows the combined focal plane of the two instruments on board ESA's Planck spacecraft. The High Frequency Instrument (HFI) is visible as a circular forest of horns at the centre, ...

The Planck mission has produced a map of the cosmic microwave background at higher resolution than ever before. Peter Coles explains its implications for our understanding of the universe The most ...

What Planck saw: does the cosmic microwave background harbour evidence for loop quantum cosmology? (Courtesy: ESA and the Planck Collaboration) A theory of quantum gravity that describes the universe ...

The European-led team behind the Planck cosmology probe on Thursday released the mission's first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background — a post-big-bang "baby picture" that suggests our ...