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Background hots up

26 February 2001

The spectrum of a distant quasar reveals the presence of cosmic microwave background radiation
when the universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The observations allow astronomers to place limits on the
temperature of the radiation at this epoch – 6-14K. This is consistent with Big Bang theory, which predicts
9K. The quasar was imaged using the 8.2m Kueyen telescope.

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