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 WMAP mission to map the CMB.
* 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. [RSR: Are they in denial?] '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: Yes, they are in denial and 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?.
…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.]
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