] One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is that
] the first generation of stars to shine in the Universe
] first ignited only 200 million years after the Big Bang,
] much earlier than many scientists had expected.
] In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of
] the Universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably
] small one percent margin of error.
] The WMAP team found that the Big Bang and Inflation
] theories continue to ring true. The contents of the
] Universe include 4% atoms (ordinary matter), 23% of an
] unknown type of dark matter, and 73% of a mysterious dark
] energy. The new measurements even shed light on the
] nature of the dark energy, which acts as a sort of an
] anti-gravity.