BOOMERANG Images The Early Universe . ... The blotchy structures it detected are seen above in the sharpest yet picture of the universe at an early age , perhaps a mere 300,000 years old. ... Dramatically, the size of the fluctuations in the BOOMERANG image has convinced many cosmologists that the universe contains just exactly enough matter and energy to be flat -- a powerful prediction of the popular theory of Inflation which describes the earliest moments of the Big Bang . ...