The results released on April 24 are ten times more precise than measurements previously published from the satellite. These newly refined measurements show irregularities in the background radiation as large as about one part in 100,000. The size of these irregularities tells us that the universe contains roughly nine times as much exotic matter as ordinary matter. Nevertheless, the amount of exotic matter in the universe is now known much more accurately than before. And, that is something to be excited about.
Exotic matter is the strange stuff that only weakly interacts with radiation.
Hubble telescope discoveries As I mentioned in my introduction, I had begun to write an article about some other recent discoveries concerning the big bang creation event. It turns out that these new findings, via the Hubble Space Telescope, provide a beautiful corroboration of what George Smoot's team has just released from the COBE satellite. This ratio gives us a measure of the amount of ordinary matter in the universe. Since exotic matter so weakly interacts with radiation, it is difficult to detect. In fact, the only direct tool we have found for measuring the amount of exotic matter is a technique called gravitational lensing.