The Origins of the Cosmic Microwave Background

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is relic thermal radiation from the era of recombination and decoupling early on in the history of the universe. Its discovery in the 1960\u27s was crucial to the acceptance of the Big Bang theory, as the data closely matched the temperature and wavelength predicted by the model. Although the radiation is uniform to high precision, the small variations that do exist give us even more information about our universe today and its evolution over time, including hints at dark matter and dark energy. This paper gives some cosmological and historical background information and then develops the physics of the events that created the CMB in detail. There is also a brief discussion of the structural variations in the CMB and the implications thereof