RSR: Big Bang Theory Goes Ker-Planck
This is the show from Friday September 13th, 2013
Summary:
Real Science Radio's Excerpts
from the WMAP & Planck Anisotropy of the Universe Papers
with a little help from New Scientist
This page contains our RSR raw notes. We hope to clean this up throughout this month.
* WMAP PROJECT (2001 – 2013): This mission was the result of a partnership between Princeton University and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and later the ESA Planck spacecraft (2009 – 2013) complimented and greatly enhanced the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission to map the CMB.
* Post-show Update: Creationist cosmologist Dr. John Hartnett has written about this. See the last paragraph in his Cosmology is Not Even Astrophysics, and his excellent 2006 article CMB Conundrums.
* New Scientist: Planck shows... axis of evil: This article by Jacob Aron reviews the latest science
on the mapping of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The title of the article is Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil. It's about, "… a four-year mission conducted by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft, which has created the highest-resolution map yet of the entire cosmic microwave background (CMB)… Planck's map greatly improves cosmologists' understanding of the universe, but it does not solve lingering mysteries over unusual patterns in the CMB. These include a 'preferred' direction in the way the temperature of the light varies, dubbed the cosmic 'axis of evil'…
The high-resolution results from Planck show very strong agreement with cosmological theory. 'The overall conclusion is that standard cosmology is an extremely good match to Planck data,' said Cambridge astrophysicist George] Efstathiou. 'If I were an inflationary theorist I would be extremely happy.'
Cosmologists can't pack up and go home just yet though, as Planck's map has also confirmed the presence of a mysterious alignment of the universe. [RSR: Seems like they are committing a rsr/org/ReMineism.] The "axis of evil" was identified by Planck's predecessor, NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe…
The pattern of hot and cold variations in the CMB should be randomly distributed – and they are when comparing small patches of the universe. At larger scales, however, Planck reveals that one half of the universe has bigger variations than the other. Planck's detectors are over 10 times more sensitive and have about 2.5 times the angular resolution of WMAP's, giving cosmologists a much better look at this alignment. "We can be extremely confident that these anomalies are not caused by galactic emissions and not caused by instrumental effects, because our two instruments see very similar features," said Efstathiou.
* CMB Map Resolution Improvement Since 1992: Wow! Via Planck.
arXiv Aug. 19, 2013 Dipole Anisotropy in Integrated Linearly Polarized Flux Density in NVSS Data
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - 208016, India
"There currently exists considerable evidence in favor of a large scale anisotropy in the Universe with the preferred axis pointing roughly in the direction of Virgo, close to the CMBR dipole" that is, within margins of error, which dipole itself is much larger than expected by the Doppler effect. "Furthermore it seems very unlikely that systematic effects would pick the same direction in so many different observations, i.e. radio polarizations orientations (Jain & Ralston 1999), optical polarizations (Hutsem´ ekers 1998), CMBR quadrupole and octopole (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 2004), radio number counts (Blake & Wall 2002; Singal 2011) and radio polarization flux (present work). In all likelihood this alignment of axes (Ralston & Jain 2004) is caused by a physical effect." (Tiwari and Jain, 2013, pp. 1, 13)
arXiv Aug. 8, 2013: Testing the Dipole Modulation Model in CMBR
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - 208016, India, Pranati K. Rath and Pankaj Jain
"…there are several observations which suggest a preferred axis pointing roughly towards Virgo [1–6]. One also observes a hemispherical anisotropy [7–13], where the power extracted from two different hemispheres shows significant difference from one another. The power in each hemisphere is estimated by making a harmonic decomposition of the masked sky. … This direction is nearly perpendicular to the direction towards Virgo. These observations suggest a violation of the cosmological principle… the hemispherical anisotropy found in [7–12] cannot be consistently attributed to the dipole modulation model, Eq. 1.1. The true anisotropy model is likely to be more complicated and might contain higher order multipoles."
arXiv May 17, 2013: Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky?
Astronomy and Astrophysics Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India
"… (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies, which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic [1,2]. … Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies… The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). [RSR: The NCP is the point in the sky about which all the stars seen from the Northern Hemisphere rotate.] We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. …radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. [RSR: they're only anomalies because of the big bang expectations]… What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican [cosmological] principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based… [The] probability of occurrence due to being simply a statistical fluctuation is only about 5×10^5 [1 in 20,000]. These results are robust. There is little likelihood that these anomaly could be the result of, e.g., some missing sources in the 3CRR catalogue, as this is one of the most thoroughly studied radio complete sample of sources… The number and size distribution data in region I seems to punch a hole in the unification scheme, however here we have even bigger things at stake [RSR: than just anisotropy in the CMB]. …a large scale dipole anisotropy in radio source distribution at much fainter levels was seen earlier, and was [initially] interpreted due to motion of the solar system… However the present anisotropies could not be caused by a motion of the solar system as it could not give rise to different anisotropies for different objects. … The apparent alignment in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in one particular direction through space is called ”evil” because it undermines our ideas about the standard cosmological model. … The axis of evil passes very close to the line joining the two equinox points, and so does the dipole direction representing the overall motion of the solar system in the universe. Also our plane [i.e., this May 2013 paper on Cornell University's arXiv service] dividing the two regions of asymmetry passes through the same two equinox points. …there is no denying that from the large anisotropies present in the radio sky, independently seen both in the discrete source distribution and in the diffuse CMBR, the Copernican principle seems to be in jeopardy.
arXiv 2012 Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Parameter Results
The quadrupole and octupole, expected to have independent and random orientations… differ by ~ 3 degrees.
…an interpretation of the temperature-temperature and temperature-polarization cross-power – 4 – spectrum peaks [is in] (Page et al. 2003b). [BE note: Perusing the Page 2003b paper, I think it attempts to explain the quadrupole data in terms of the alleged reionization of the universe. So far, I haven't found which of the WMAP papers directly address (in English at least
the dipole, quadrupole, octopole, etc. anisotropy.]
[More excerpts to come…]
2007 Physical Review D (pdf) The Uncorrelated Universe: Statistical Anisotropy and the Vanishing Angular Correlation Function in WMAP Years 1-3
Physics Department, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH; Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, IL; Physics Department, Bielefeld University, Germany; Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Oxford, UK.
"The large-angle (low-?) correlations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) as reported by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) after their first year of observations exhibited statistically significant anomalies compared to the predictions of the standard inflationary big-bang model. …despite the identification by the WMAP team of a systematic correlated with the equinoxes and the ecliptic, the anomalies in the first- year Internal Linear Combination (ILC) map persist in the three-year ILC map, in all-but-one case at similar statistical significance. The three-year ILC quadrupole and octopole therefore remain inconsistent with statistical isotropy – they are correlated with each other (99.6%C.L.), and there are statistically significant correlations with local geometry, especially that of the solar system. The angular two-point correlation… is even more discrepant with the best fit ?CDM inflationary model than in the first-year data – 99.97%C.L. for the new ILC map. … The role of the newly identified low-? systematics is more puzzling than reassuring."
2009 Astrophysical Journal Hinshaw, et al., Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations
"We present new full-sky temperature and polarization maps… based on data from the first five years of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sky survey. The new maps are consistent with previous maps and are more sensitive. … W-band polarization data is not yet suitable for cosmological studies… Ka-band data is suitable for use… [The map just below, to the right, is for one of the 5 frequency ranges, at 23 GHz.] With the five-year WMAP data, we detect no convincing deviations from the minimal six-parameter ?CDM model: a flat universe dominated by a cosmological constant…" …
"The cosmological implications of the five-year WMAP data are discussed in detail in Dunkley et al. (2009) and Komatsu et al. (2009). The now-standard cosmological model: a flat universe dominated by vacuum energy and dark matter, seeded by nearly scale-invariant, adiabatic, Gaussian random-phase fluctuations, continues to fit the five-year data." … "Ka-band data can be used along with Q- and V-band data for cosmological analyses."
"The WMAP observatory continues to operate at L2 [Lagrange 2]… The WMAP data continue to uphold the standard ?CDM model but more data may reveal new surprises."
See also Table 7: Cosmological Parameter Summary for latest values for age of universe, Hubble constant, baryon density, dark matter & energy densities, age at reionization, total density, etc.
Ask R: " we now see unambiguous evidence for a second dip in the high-l TE spectrum, which further constrains deviations from the standard ?CDM model." p. 240
" The five-year data continue to favor a tilted primordial fluctuation spectrum…" p. 243
2006 Blog: WMAP: The Cosmic Axis of Evil by Univ. of Michigan Astronomy Department's Michael Milligan:
"The top left figure is the familiar temperature map of the microwave background. Now the bread-and-butter of CMB work is breaking this map up into multipoles, or simple functions that each encode structure on a particular scale, and which when added together give you the original map. … When this was first done a few years back, ears pricked up because, if you squint, it looks like the l=2 and l=3 (and maybe l=5) multipoles have the same alignment. Almost like they're lined up along a cosmic axis, which you wouldn't expect if the multipoles are randomly aligned. But it's theoretically very naughty to give the Universe any kind of special direction; hence the axis of evil bit. In particular, it's hard to have a preferred cosmic axis, or vector anisotropy, without messing up the electromagnetic force in really obvious ways. But back then it was pointed out that the supposed Cosmic Axis also lines up with the axis of the galactic coordinate system, and that would be quadruply unlikely. So it was dismissed as an artifact of not being able to perfectly subtract contamination from the galaxy -- for instance, maybe the cold patch I mentioned above isn't real. Except that now we have the 3-year WMAP data release, and it makes a strong case that this is real. So either we have a curious coincidence on our hands (just how curious is being hotly debated, but any sort of curious coincidence always makes theoretical physicists jumpy), or there's something genuinely odd about the very geometry of our universe. So far they think it's not quite curious enough that we need to seriously consider the second possibility, but be sure that they're thinking about it." Image from 3-Year WMAP: Temperature Analysis, 2007, Hinshaw et al., p. 316 [predated blog?].
2007 Astrophysical Journal Three-Year WMAP Observations: Implications for Cosmology
The authors exuberantly see affirmations everywhere of the standard model (which by "the WMAP data… require dark matter"); they confidently state that, "there is little room for significant modifications of the basic ?CDM model" (which will be fun to assess over the next decade); and then as quietly as a ReMineism they conclude, "Cosmology requires… a mechanism to generate primordial fluctuation."
All WMAP data are public, at http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis.
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/current/map_bibliography.cfm
REVIEW ALSO for this RSR summary: (Michael Milligan, blogger at the University of Michigan, recommends reviewing the first two):
- 2013. "Planck 2013 results XXIII. Isotropy and Statistics of the CMB" brief discussion in sec. 5.1, "mode alignment"
- 2011. Bennett et al. "Seven-year WMAP Observations: Are There Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies?" updated discussion and figure
- 2007. Hinshaw. 3-Year WMAP: Temperature Analysis
- 2009. Komatsu. ApJS, 180, 330. A "discussion of the cosmological interpretation…"
- 2011. Larson. ApJS, 192, 16. On the "cosmological parameters based only on WMAP data…"
- 2011. Komatsu. ApJS, 192, 18. On the "cosmological interpretations based on a wider set of cosmological data…"
- 2011. Bennett. ApJS, 192, 17. A "discussion of the goodness of fit of the ?CDM model and potential anomalies…"
- 2007. Spergel. ApJS, 170, 377.
- 2009. Dunkley. "...a Bayesian [probabilities] estimation of the CMB polarization maps… completed the five-year results."
The Copernican violation paper above references these:
- 2004. CMBR observations from the WMAP satellite show unexpected anisotropies, which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic (sources: 2004, Is the Low-l Microwave Background Cosmic? Phys. Rev. Letters [not yet in RSR Mendeley acct]
- 2010. Large-Angle Anomalies in the CMB arXiv:1004.5602v2)
- 2005. Examination of evidence for a preferred axis in the cosmic radiation anisotropy Phys. Rev. Lett.
This is the show from Friday September 13th, 2013
Summary:
Real Science Radio's Excerpts
from the WMAP & Planck Anisotropy of the Universe Papers
with a little help from New Scientist
This page contains our RSR raw notes. We hope to clean this up throughout this month.
* WMAP PROJECT (2001 – 2013): This mission was the result of a partnership between Princeton University and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and later the ESA Planck spacecraft (2009 – 2013) complimented and greatly enhanced the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission to map the CMB.
* Post-show Update: Creationist cosmologist Dr. John Hartnett has written about this. See the last paragraph in his Cosmology is Not Even Astrophysics, and his excellent 2006 article CMB Conundrums.
* New Scientist: Planck shows... axis of evil: This article by Jacob Aron reviews the latest science
on the mapping of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The title of the article is Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil. It's about, "… a four-year mission conducted by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft, which has created the highest-resolution map yet of the entire cosmic microwave background (CMB)… Planck's map greatly improves cosmologists' understanding of the universe, but it does not solve lingering mysteries over unusual patterns in the CMB. These include a 'preferred' direction in the way the temperature of the light varies, dubbed the cosmic 'axis of evil'…
The high-resolution results from Planck show very strong agreement with cosmological theory. 'The overall conclusion is that standard cosmology is an extremely good match to Planck data,' said Cambridge astrophysicist George] Efstathiou. 'If I were an inflationary theorist I would be extremely happy.'
Cosmologists can't pack up and go home just yet though, as Planck's map has also confirmed the presence of a mysterious alignment of the universe. [RSR: Seems like they are committing a rsr/org/ReMineism.] The "axis of evil" was identified by Planck's predecessor, NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe…
The pattern of hot and cold variations in the CMB should be randomly distributed – and they are when comparing small patches of the universe. At larger scales, however, Planck reveals that one half of the universe has bigger variations than the other. Planck's detectors are over 10 times more sensitive and have about 2.5 times the angular resolution of WMAP's, giving cosmologists a much better look at this alignment. "We can be extremely confident that these anomalies are not caused by galactic emissions and not caused by instrumental effects, because our two instruments see very similar features," said Efstathiou.
* CMB Map Resolution Improvement Since 1992: Wow! Via Planck.
arXiv Aug. 19, 2013 Dipole Anisotropy in Integrated Linearly Polarized Flux Density in NVSS Data
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - 208016, India
"There currently exists considerable evidence in favor of a large scale anisotropy in the Universe with the preferred axis pointing roughly in the direction of Virgo, close to the CMBR dipole" that is, within margins of error, which dipole itself is much larger than expected by the Doppler effect. "Furthermore it seems very unlikely that systematic effects would pick the same direction in so many different observations, i.e. radio polarizations orientations (Jain & Ralston 1999), optical polarizations (Hutsem´ ekers 1998), CMBR quadrupole and octopole (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 2004), radio number counts (Blake & Wall 2002; Singal 2011) and radio polarization flux (present work). In all likelihood this alignment of axes (Ralston & Jain 2004) is caused by a physical effect." (Tiwari and Jain, 2013, pp. 1, 13)
arXiv Aug. 8, 2013: Testing the Dipole Modulation Model in CMBR
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - 208016, India, Pranati K. Rath and Pankaj Jain
"…there are several observations which suggest a preferred axis pointing roughly towards Virgo [1–6]. One also observes a hemispherical anisotropy [7–13], where the power extracted from two different hemispheres shows significant difference from one another. The power in each hemisphere is estimated by making a harmonic decomposition of the masked sky. … This direction is nearly perpendicular to the direction towards Virgo. These observations suggest a violation of the cosmological principle… the hemispherical anisotropy found in [7–12] cannot be consistently attributed to the dipole modulation model, Eq. 1.1. The true anisotropy model is likely to be more complicated and might contain higher order multipoles."
arXiv May 17, 2013: Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky?
Astronomy and Astrophysics Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India
"… (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies, which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic [1,2]. … Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies… The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). [RSR: The NCP is the point in the sky about which all the stars seen from the Northern Hemisphere rotate.] We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. …radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. [RSR: they're only anomalies because of the big bang expectations]… What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican [cosmological] principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based… [The] probability of occurrence due to being simply a statistical fluctuation is only about 5×10^5 [1 in 20,000]. These results are robust. There is little likelihood that these anomaly could be the result of, e.g., some missing sources in the 3CRR catalogue, as this is one of the most thoroughly studied radio complete sample of sources… The number and size distribution data in region I seems to punch a hole in the unification scheme, however here we have even bigger things at stake [RSR: than just anisotropy in the CMB]. …a large scale dipole anisotropy in radio source distribution at much fainter levels was seen earlier, and was [initially] interpreted due to motion of the solar system… However the present anisotropies could not be caused by a motion of the solar system as it could not give rise to different anisotropies for different objects. … The apparent alignment in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in one particular direction through space is called ”evil” because it undermines our ideas about the standard cosmological model. … The axis of evil passes very close to the line joining the two equinox points, and so does the dipole direction representing the overall motion of the solar system in the universe. Also our plane [i.e., this May 2013 paper on Cornell University's arXiv service] dividing the two regions of asymmetry passes through the same two equinox points. …there is no denying that from the large anisotropies present in the radio sky, independently seen both in the discrete source distribution and in the diffuse CMBR, the Copernican principle seems to be in jeopardy.
arXiv 2012 Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Parameter Results
The quadrupole and octupole, expected to have independent and random orientations… differ by ~ 3 degrees.
…an interpretation of the temperature-temperature and temperature-polarization cross-power – 4 – spectrum peaks [is in] (Page et al. 2003b). [BE note: Perusing the Page 2003b paper, I think it attempts to explain the quadrupole data in terms of the alleged reionization of the universe. So far, I haven't found which of the WMAP papers directly address (in English at least
the dipole, quadrupole, octopole, etc. anisotropy.][More excerpts to come…]
2007 Physical Review D (pdf) The Uncorrelated Universe: Statistical Anisotropy and the Vanishing Angular Correlation Function in WMAP Years 1-3
Physics Department, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH; Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, IL; Physics Department, Bielefeld University, Germany; Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Oxford, UK.
"The large-angle (low-?) correlations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) as reported by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) after their first year of observations exhibited statistically significant anomalies compared to the predictions of the standard inflationary big-bang model. …despite the identification by the WMAP team of a systematic correlated with the equinoxes and the ecliptic, the anomalies in the first- year Internal Linear Combination (ILC) map persist in the three-year ILC map, in all-but-one case at similar statistical significance. The three-year ILC quadrupole and octopole therefore remain inconsistent with statistical isotropy – they are correlated with each other (99.6%C.L.), and there are statistically significant correlations with local geometry, especially that of the solar system. The angular two-point correlation… is even more discrepant with the best fit ?CDM inflationary model than in the first-year data – 99.97%C.L. for the new ILC map. … The role of the newly identified low-? systematics is more puzzling than reassuring."
2009 Astrophysical Journal Hinshaw, et al., Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations
"We present new full-sky temperature and polarization maps… based on data from the first five years of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sky survey. The new maps are consistent with previous maps and are more sensitive. … W-band polarization data is not yet suitable for cosmological studies… Ka-band data is suitable for use… [The map just below, to the right, is for one of the 5 frequency ranges, at 23 GHz.] With the five-year WMAP data, we detect no convincing deviations from the minimal six-parameter ?CDM model: a flat universe dominated by a cosmological constant…" …
"The cosmological implications of the five-year WMAP data are discussed in detail in Dunkley et al. (2009) and Komatsu et al. (2009). The now-standard cosmological model: a flat universe dominated by vacuum energy and dark matter, seeded by nearly scale-invariant, adiabatic, Gaussian random-phase fluctuations, continues to fit the five-year data." … "Ka-band data can be used along with Q- and V-band data for cosmological analyses."
"The WMAP observatory continues to operate at L2 [Lagrange 2]… The WMAP data continue to uphold the standard ?CDM model but more data may reveal new surprises."
See also Table 7: Cosmological Parameter Summary for latest values for age of universe, Hubble constant, baryon density, dark matter & energy densities, age at reionization, total density, etc.
Ask R: " we now see unambiguous evidence for a second dip in the high-l TE spectrum, which further constrains deviations from the standard ?CDM model." p. 240
" The five-year data continue to favor a tilted primordial fluctuation spectrum…" p. 243
2006 Blog: WMAP: The Cosmic Axis of Evil by Univ. of Michigan Astronomy Department's Michael Milligan:
"The top left figure is the familiar temperature map of the microwave background. Now the bread-and-butter of CMB work is breaking this map up into multipoles, or simple functions that each encode structure on a particular scale, and which when added together give you the original map. … When this was first done a few years back, ears pricked up because, if you squint, it looks like the l=2 and l=3 (and maybe l=5) multipoles have the same alignment. Almost like they're lined up along a cosmic axis, which you wouldn't expect if the multipoles are randomly aligned. But it's theoretically very naughty to give the Universe any kind of special direction; hence the axis of evil bit. In particular, it's hard to have a preferred cosmic axis, or vector anisotropy, without messing up the electromagnetic force in really obvious ways. But back then it was pointed out that the supposed Cosmic Axis also lines up with the axis of the galactic coordinate system, and that would be quadruply unlikely. So it was dismissed as an artifact of not being able to perfectly subtract contamination from the galaxy -- for instance, maybe the cold patch I mentioned above isn't real. Except that now we have the 3-year WMAP data release, and it makes a strong case that this is real. So either we have a curious coincidence on our hands (just how curious is being hotly debated, but any sort of curious coincidence always makes theoretical physicists jumpy), or there's something genuinely odd about the very geometry of our universe. So far they think it's not quite curious enough that we need to seriously consider the second possibility, but be sure that they're thinking about it." Image from 3-Year WMAP: Temperature Analysis, 2007, Hinshaw et al., p. 316 [predated blog?
].2007 Astrophysical Journal Three-Year WMAP Observations: Implications for Cosmology
The authors exuberantly see affirmations everywhere of the standard model (which by "the WMAP data… require dark matter"); they confidently state that, "there is little room for significant modifications of the basic ?CDM model" (which will be fun to assess over the next decade); and then as quietly as a ReMineism they conclude, "Cosmology requires… a mechanism to generate primordial fluctuation."
All WMAP data are public, at http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis.
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/current/map_bibliography.cfm
REVIEW ALSO for this RSR summary: (Michael Milligan, blogger at the University of Michigan, recommends reviewing the first two):
- 2013. "Planck 2013 results XXIII. Isotropy and Statistics of the CMB" brief discussion in sec. 5.1, "mode alignment"
- 2011. Bennett et al. "Seven-year WMAP Observations: Are There Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies?" updated discussion and figure
- 2007. Hinshaw. 3-Year WMAP: Temperature Analysis
- 2009. Komatsu. ApJS, 180, 330. A "discussion of the cosmological interpretation…"
- 2011. Larson. ApJS, 192, 16. On the "cosmological parameters based only on WMAP data…"
- 2011. Komatsu. ApJS, 192, 18. On the "cosmological interpretations based on a wider set of cosmological data…"
- 2011. Bennett. ApJS, 192, 17. A "discussion of the goodness of fit of the ?CDM model and potential anomalies…"
- 2007. Spergel. ApJS, 170, 377.
- 2009. Dunkley. "...a Bayesian [probabilities] estimation of the CMB polarization maps… completed the five-year results."
The Copernican violation paper above references these:
- 2004. CMBR observations from the WMAP satellite show unexpected anisotropies, which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic (sources: 2004, Is the Low-l Microwave Background Cosmic? Phys. Rev. Letters [not yet in RSR Mendeley acct]
- 2010. Large-Angle Anomalies in the CMB arXiv:1004.5602v2)
- 2005. Examination of evidence for a preferred axis in the cosmic radiation anisotropy Phys. Rev. Lett.
