The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73 K cosmic microwave background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the microwave background in the form of small anisotropies in its temperature. These anisotropies contain information about basic cosmological parameters, particularly the total energy density and curvature of the Universe. Here we report the first images of resolved structure in the microwave background anisotropies over a significant part of the sky. Maps at four frequencies clearly distinguish the microwave background from foreground emission. We compute the angular power spectrum of the microwave background, and find a peak at Legendre multipole Ipeak = (197 +/- 6), with an amplitude delta T200 = (69 +/- 8) microK. This is consistent with that expected for cold dark matter models in a flat (euclidean) Universe, as favoured by standard inflationary models.

The discrete specmm of the hydrogen atom moving acmss a stmng magnetic field (E = 7 x 10"-7 x IO'* G) is studied by expanding wavefunctions over a complete onhogonal basis, whose single term pmvides a correct description of an mmic state at large pseudomomenta K of the h'ansverse motion. Wavefunctions, energies, atomic sires and oscillator strengths of radiative transitions a~ calculated and analysed in a wide range of K values. AU these quantities undergo radical changes when the atom moves acioss the field. The discrete s p e c " remains infinite at arbitrary K. although the mean transverse velocity cannot exceed some maximum value for lhe bound states. Oscillator e n g t h s change by orders of magnitude and some dipole selection rules are violated.

This paper presents a measurement of the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background from ℓ = 75 to ℓ = 1025 (∼ 10 ′ to 2.4 o ) from a combined analysis of four 150 GHz channels in the BOOMERANG experiment. The spectrum contains multiple peaks and minima, as predicted by standard adiabatic-inflationary models in which the primordial plasma undergoes acoustic oscillations. These results, in concert with other types of cosmological measurements and theoretical models, significantly constrain the values of Ω tot , Ω b h 2 , Ω c h 2 and n s .

Gravitational lensing is a powerful astrophysical and cosmological probe and is particularly valuable at submillimeter wavelengths for the study of the statistical and individual properties of dusty star-forming galaxies. However, the identification of gravitational lenses is often time-intensive, involving the sifting of large volumes of imaging or spectroscopic data to find few candidates. We used early data from the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey to demonstrate that wide-area submillimeter surveys can simply and easily detect strong gravitational lensing events, with close to 100% efficiency.

Recent results from BOOMERANG-98 and MAXIMA-1, taken together with COBE DMR, provide consistent and high signal-to-noise measurements of the cosmic microwave background power spectrum at spherical harmonic multipole bands over 2