Balloon-borne Observations of the Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background

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The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is a relic left over from the early universe and it has its origin in the "big bang" in which the universe that we live in was created. The variations in brightness on the sky of the CMBR carry the imprint of the distribution of matter about 300,000 years after creation and the linear polarization of the CMBR can provide information from even earlier times, just a fraction of a second after creation. This award provides support for the on-going analysis of CMBR data obtained by an Antarctic long-duration balloon flight in 1998-99, for the development of modifications for the earlier payload to measure polarization and for another Antarctic flight. The research team doing this work is probably the leading group in the world for the field.