Science Daily — The European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck mission, which will study the conditions present in our Universe shortly after the Big Bang, is reaching an important milestone with the integration of instruments into the satellite at Alcatel Alenia Space in Cannes, France.

Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive Officer of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), who fund the UK involvement in the mission, said, "Planck presents a tremendous opportunity to further our knowledge and understanding of the parameters that control the functioning of our Universe. The integration of the instruments into the spacecraft is a significant milestone that marks a major step towards launch next year."

Some theories – such as string theory – that attempt to unify all known forces into a single "theory of everything" posit the existence of extra spatial dimensions beyond the three familiar ones.

But string theory has proven stubbornly resistant to experimental tests (although some physicists say it could be tested in the Large Hadron Collider scheduled to open by the end of 2007).

Now, Gary Shiu and Bret Underwood, both physicists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US, say the shape of the extra dimensions could leave an imprint in the afterglow of the big bang. This glow, called the cosmic microwave background, reveals the structure of the universe about 370,000 years after the big bang.