Did the COBE, WMAP and Planck satellites really measure the temperature of the Universe?
Question (1): When you put a glass of water inside a microwave oven and turn it on does the water in the glass reflect the microwaves or does it absorb them?
Answer: The water absorbs the microwaves. Indeed, foodstuffs too, placed inside the microwave oven, absorb the microwaves. That is how the oven works and why it is called ‘a microwave oven’.
Question (2): Is a powerful absorber of microwaves also a powerful emitter thereof?
Answer: It is very well known that a powerful absorber of microwaves is also a powerful emitter of microwaves.
Thus, by (1) and (2), water is a powerful emitter of microwaves.
CONSEQUENCES FOR THE SO-CALLED COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND (CMB)
Approximately 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Earth’s surface is covered by water (oceans). The Earth’s atmosphere also contains water in solid, liquid and gaseous phases. Oceanic and atmospheric water microwave and far-infrared emission is facilitated by a fundamental physical oscillator, the hydrogen bond (Robitaille 2009). These emissions are scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere to produce an omnidirectional microwave and far-infrared isotropic bath under steady state conditions, that is independent of seasonal changes (Robitaille 2007, 2008), from initial anisotropic sources (reservoirs of water).
The Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE) satellite was in Earth orbit at an altitude of about 900 to 950 km. The Far Infrared-Red Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) aboard COBE was fitted with a shield to block extraneous radiation entering the detector and heating it. The COBE Team reported “best blackbody curve ever measured” is actually the difference between the sky and the calibrator aboard FIRAS. Although the FIRAS horn was designed as a broadband horn 30-3,000 GHz, it operated primarily from ~30-600 GHz. It is impossible to construct an effective shield to protect from extraneous signals over the entire range 30-3,000GHz. The FIRAS shield was NOT designed to shield for microwaves and so it was susceptible to microwave diffraction over it and into its detector.








But the emotive image is utterly false. CO2 emissions are colorless. But, more crucially, this benign atmopsheric trace gas (< 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}) is non-toxic, being the very stuff we exhale as we breath and plants require as food.


