Final Report Summary - COSMOPARS (Precision Cosmological Parameters)
The project also aimed to establish new methods to measure the integrated mass in the universe by using gravitational lensing of the microwave background. Gravitational lensing causes small distortions of the light from the Big Bang caused by matter. We devised new powerful methods to extract this signal from the data, and used data from the Planck satellite to provide the best maps of the lensing effect over the full sky. Our new techniques will be particularly powerful with new more sensitive data, such as from the Simons Observatory currently being built in Chile.