What is the current best value for the cosmic background temperature?

The best current value now being released by the NASA COBE Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) experiment, based on all 9 months of the available observations is:

T = 2.728 +/- 0.002 Kelvins

The uncertainty that has previously dominated the statistics was caused by a variety of systematic errors in the calibration and analysis procedures which have now been substantially reduced. The first measurement published in 1990 of T = 2.735 +/- 0.060 K was based on only 9 minutes of data.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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