What can we learn from measuring the temperature of space?

Maynooth University

On a clear night, when we gaze at the skies we can look back in time.



With an optical telescope, or sometimes even with just the naked eye, we see the pinpoints of light that we call stars.



What is actually meeting our eyes is energy in the visible wavelength that has travelled across space (and time) from that star or planet to us. 
But what about the wavelengths that we can’t see? That ‘invisible’ energy can also tell us much about the universe and its history, if we know how to look at it. Scientists at Maynooth University ’s Department of Experimental Physics know how to look at it, and their research is helping to cast the universe in a new light.