Unveiling Cosmic Structures through Big Bang's Afterglow.

Cosmologists are using data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which was discovered in 1965, to map the large-scale structures that developed over billions of years as the universe matured. By looking beyond the primary fluctuations in the CMB light to the secondary imprints left by interactions with galaxies and other cosmic structures, they are gaining a crisper view of the distribution of both ordinary matter and the mysterious dark matter. This is helping to settle some long-standing cosmological mysteries and pose some new ones.