If our 13.8 billion-year-old cosmos could be considered middle-aged, researchers note these new images captured around its 380,000th birthday represent a snapshot of the universe as a newborn.
New 'baby pictures' of the cosmos show the universe in its infancy toggle caption ACT Collaboration; ESA / Planck Collaboration Sure, they're not your typical baby pictures. But a global team of researchers says new images published this week show some of the clearest visualizations yet of the universe in its infancy. If our roughly 13 billion-year-old cosmos could be considered middle-aged, the researchers note, these new images captured around its 380,000th birthday represent a snapshot of the universe as a newborn. The images were created using data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), which is located in a remote part of the Chilean Andes and has since been decommissioned. It was the last major data release to come from the project. ACT had a much higher resolution than the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope, so strong that it allowed researchers to see the faint polarization of light and create increasingly…