The project has received funding from Queen's University, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council - the UK's strategic science investment agency - and the Open University.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Scientists seek unknown planets

Robert Hooke, 1635-1703 worked at the forefront of physics, astronomy, microscopy, physiology and geology and published the first fully illustrated scientific textbook, Micrographia.

UNESCO: 2014 UK Memory of the World Register

"By the matching observations from Planck to predictions from models, we can assemble a surprisingly detailed picture of the universe as it was one nano-nano-nano-nanosecond after the Big Bang, " said Marc Kamionkowski, professor of physics and astronomy at John Hopkins University.

CNN: Better 'baby picture' of universe emerges

Even as Adam Riess was regaling the media with an amusing, self-depreciating, anecdote about his early morning wake-up call from Oslo, deep in the bowels of UCL's Department of Physics and Astronomy researchers were putting the finishing touches to a camera that could finally shed some light on the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize for Physics.

BBC: Getting the measure of dark energy