"An international team of cosmologists has released the first detailed images of the universe in its infancy" says a NASA press release on its web page. "The images reveal the structure that existed in the universe when it was a tiny fraction of its current age and 1,000 times smaller and hotter than it is today. Detailed analysis is already shedding light on some of cosmology's outstanding mysteries–the nature of the matter and energy that dominate intergalactic space and whether space is ‘curved’ or ‘flat.’

"The project, dubbed BOOMERANG (Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics), obtained the images using an extremely sensitive telescope suspended from a balloon that circumnavigated the Antarctic in late 1998. The balloon carried the telescope at an altitude of almost 120,000 feet (37 kilometers) for 10½ days. The results [were] published in the April 27, 2000 issue of Nature.

"Today, the universe is filled with galaxies and clusters of galaxies. But 12 to 15 billion years ago, following the Big Bang, the universe was very smooth, incredibly hot and dense. The intense heat that filled the embryonic universe is still detectable today as a faint glow of microwave radiation visible in all directions. This radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Since the CMB was first discovered by a ground-based radio telescope in 1965, scientists have eagerly tried to obtain high-resolution images of this radiation. NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite discovered the first evidence for structures, or spatial variations, in the microwave background in 1991." Thus the press release. The long ages are, of course, totally hypothetical.

The press release continues: "The BOOMERANG images are the first to bring the cosmic microwave background into sharp focus. The images reveal hundreds of complex regions visible as tiny variations– typically only 100-millionths of a degree Celsius (0.0001 C)–in the temperature of the CMB. The complex patterns visible in the images confirm predictions of the patterns that would result from sound waves racing through the early universe, creating the structures that by now have evolved into giant clusters and super-clusters of galaxies.

"The BOOMERANG images cover about 3 percent of the sky. The team's analysis of the size of the structures in the cosmic microwave background has produced the most precise measurements to date of the geometry of space-time, which strongly indicate that the geometry of the universe is flat, not curved. This result is in agreement with a fundamental prediction of the "inflationary" theory of the universe. This theory hypothesizes that the entire universe grew from a tiny subatomic region during a period of violent expansion a split second after the Big Bang. The enormous expansion would have stretched the geometry of space until it was flat."

And there we have our creationist application. The inflationary model is capable not only of accounting for a 15-billion-year old universe, but it can also account for a 6,000-year old universe. (The original 1971 version produced the present universe in less than 100,000 years, for example.) Its flatness has theological significance, namely, that the universe is on the border of being open and closed. Thus God can but need not operate miracles in his creation. A closed universe is doomed while an open universe is open to our infinite Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ.

At left: By observing the characteristic size of hot and cold spots in the BOOMERANG images, the geometry of space can be determined. Cosmological simulations predict that if our universe has a flat geometry, (in which standard high school geometry applies), then the BOOMERANG images will be dominated by hot and cold spots of around 1 degree in size (bottom center). If, on the other hand, the geometry of space is curved, then the bending of light by this curvature of space will distort the images. If the universe is closed, so that parallel lines converge, then the images will be magnified by this curvature, and structures will appear larger than 1 degree on the sky (bottom left). Conversely, if the universe is open, and parallel lines diverge then structures in the images will appear smaller (bottom right). Comparison with the BOOMERANG image (top) indicates that space is very nearly flat.