Simulations of observations of the CMB

Simulations of observations of the CMB show the dramatic improvement that can be achieved by increasing the angular resolution and sensitivity of an experiment from the level of WMAP (right panel) to the level of Planck (left panel). The quantity shown on these plots (called the angular power spectrum) encodes the amount of cosmologically relevant information available in the maps, reflected in the bumps and wiggles of the red curve. The blue bars show that Planck will be able to recover about 15 times as much relevant information as WMAP.