Today is a great day. The European Space Agency has released the most precise map so far of the oldest light in the universe. The best news is that is reveals an 'almost perfect universe'. By that they mean it almost conforms to expectations – but not quite.

While the basic 'big bang' picture of our universe's birth is confirmed, the unexplained aspects of the data are where the real excitement lies because these could be signposts to new physics. At the press conference this morning, Professor George Efstathiou, University of Cambridge, UK said that the Planck data showed that, 'Cosmology is not finished.'


Although now called the big bang, Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître, who was the first to mathematically investigate the origin of the universe, wistfully referred to it as the 'day without yesterday'. If Efstathiou is right, however, the big bang did have a yesterday after all.

ESA say that this new map of the cosmic microwave background 'challenges some of the fundamental principles of the big bang theory.' It does this by confirming the existence of features in the map that cannot be explained by prevailing theory.