Charles L. Bennett on WMAP and Other Astronomically Cited Work

摘要

In recent months, the Science Watch Physics Top Ten has been dominated by observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The results from the Wilkinson Microwave Ani-sotropy Probe (WMAP), a NASA mission launched in 2001, are more highly cited than any recent work in cosmology. Standing at #1 in the Physics Top Ten is the WMAP paper on thefirstyear of observations (see page 6; see also the accompanying table on page 4). Amazingly, this 2003 report (D.N. Spergel, et al., from Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series) has amassed more than 1,000 citations since publication, a tally that has secured its place in the Physics Top Ten for the last 14 months. Indeed, in the latest Hot Papers extraction, Spergel et al. collected more bimonthly citations than any paper in all of science published in the last two years. At the moment, its only competition among physics's hottest papers is #2 in the current Top Ten: another WMAP paper from the same issue of the journal.