The European Space Agency's Planck Telescope was launched in May of 2009 together and quickly took up resident around Lagrangian point L2 at a distance of a million miles. Named after the brilliant father of quantum mechanics, Max Planck, it sees in a wider band of wavelengths than 
its predecessors WMAP and COBE, and has now returned one of the most detailed images yet of the biggest firework in the universe: the Big Bang.
Cosmologists estimate the Big Bang occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, when all the matter and energy that would eventually constitute the universe was concentrated in a space smaller than the period at the end of this sentence at ineffable pressure and density. Shown below is the picture of the early universe taken by Planck courtesy of the ESA. The Cosmic Microwave Background i.e., the afterglow, is the yellow mottling above and below the blue and white section in the center produced by the main disk of our Milky Way galaxy (ESA Planck Image gallery).
The image below courtesy of the Wiki gives an idea of the cosmic timeline. The Big Bang was followed a tiny fraction of a second later by an even more expansive, enigmatic event called Inflation. But it would take another 400,000 years before the early universe cooled enough -- if by cool we mean several thousand degrees -- for the first simple atoms to form and become transparent to the prodigious light produced by the celestial fireworks. It would be about 400 million years more before the first stars would shine.
What Planck actually sees is the afterglow produced by the Big Bang in our era. Today, the universe has cooled to 2.7° K or about 455 degrees Fahrenheit below zero! But Planck can discern minute temperature deltas of a millionth of one of those degrees using several instruments, including a super cooled detecter, making the most detailed images yet possible. And cosmologists say this is just the beginning for Planck: the 800 million dollar spacecraft is expected to produce even more detailed and compelling images of cosmic creation over the next few years.
Comments
For every one out there that believes this to be true, there are a thousand potato heads that will kill and destroy to prevent their belief in a god from being challenged. I believe the most tragic aspect of life is the cruelty of our short existence. Even living to be 1000 would be too short. It all makes me think consciousness and intelligence is a punishment.
And how, Spole, does this preclude the existence of God? Plus, do not forget that for every few potato heads who believe in God, there's some chowderhead who believes that this Big Bang just appeared -- poof! -- magically out of nothing and nowhere. Oh, I know, there are plenty of esoteric theories about this. It's the atheist equivalent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I think this demonstrates the existence of God.
Amazing and incomprehensible.
It certainly proves the existence of Universe/God/Universal mind. If you fast played the universe it would have more connecting nodes and pathways where messages were transmitted than that of the human brain. Especially if you condensed the timeline of the universe to that of the lifespan of a organic brain. Put that together with the Drake equation and see how things correlate to a network of intelligence over time.
I've always found it odd that creationists and other anti-science nuts attack the Big Bang. A universe that has always existed does not need to be created, but a universe with a beginning is at least consistent with one that has a creator.
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