The European Space Agency has published a map of the cosmic background radiation compiled from images taken by the Planck space telescope. This measures very slight differences in the microwave background temperature, which is at about 2.7 degrees kelvin.
The data allows some refinement in understand of some of the details of the universe:
1) 4.9% of the mass/energy of the universe is “normal” matter and energy such as stars and planets and photons and such
2) Dark matter makes up 26.8%
3) Dark energy makes up 68.3% (Consider that we know virtually *squat* about dark energy, other than it will KILL US ALL)
4) The Hubble constant has been refined to 67.15 kilometers per second per megaparsec
5) The age of the universe is now estimated at 13.82 billion years.
Additionally, there is a cold spot in the universe, and definite asymmetry. Odd, those…
