IEEE/SP 13th workshop on Statistical Signal Processing July, 17-20, 2005 - Bordeaux - France

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Big Bang Likelihood
Plenary Lecture 5

Abstract

Cosmologists like to claim that recent developments in instrumentation and theory have ushered in a new era of "precision cosmology". Big Bang theory, once controversial, is now well supported by several independent observations.

A unique perspective into the very early ages of the Universe is offered by high accuracy measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), one of the pillars of the standard cosmological model. This fossil radiation which permeates the Cosmos has been mapped in several frequency bands by various instruments, including a recent dedicated NASA's W-MAP satellite. The European Spatial Agency is preparing an even more ambitious space mission: Planck (to be launched in 2007). These instruments, and many other, deliver massive data sets which require the development of sophisticated statistical signal and image processing methods.

In this talk, I will give an overview of the role of CMB in cosmology and explain why and how we observe it. I will outline some of the challenges in extracting of Big Science from the large and complex data sets produced by modern CMB measurements. I will show how statistical processing of CMB data contributes to answering questions like: what is the likelihood that the Universe is flat, that it is 13 billions years old?