ON A remote Antarctic mountain top near the infamous Pole of Inaccessibility, in bitter winds and icy temperatures comparable to those on Mars, a daring and perilous rescue mission has been successfully executed.
Who could have been stranded in such a place? Turns out it was a telescope, named Boomerang. It was built to fly above Antarctica attached to a giant weather balloon, measuring the cosmic microwave background left over from the big bang, which provides us with vital information about the structure of space-time. But on its second flight, in January 2003, this was one boomerang that didn’t come…
