The European Space Agency has been monitoring the light emitted during the Big Bang for the past 15 months. This has been carried out using its Planck telescope.

A map of the universe has also been captured. It contains a spread of the oldest light ever to travel across the cosmos. It also reveals the so-called “cosmic microwave background” (‘CMB’) i.e. the faint glow of radiation that is left over from the earliest light to illuminate the cosmos.

The latest data suggests the universe is 13.2 billion years old. Get your head around that.