Cosmic oddity casts doubt on theory of universe

Globeandmail.com ^ | 01/29/05 | DAN FALK

[null and void]

It would save time. Maybe to seconds?

[null and void]

for t to?

[PatrickHenry]

Science Ping!

An elite subset of the Evolution list.

See list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail to be added/dropped.

[PatrickHenry]

I can't find any other news stories about this "finding" and I can't find Starkman in Physical Review Letters for 2005.

[AntiGuv]

"Let there be light," still makes more sense to me than any theory I've heard from the goofball scientists.

That should go without saying. The "let there be light" theory was designed to appear readily sensible even to primitive, illiterate savages in the wilderness of the ancient Levant. Much of the cosmological discovery of science is dependent on higher order physics and cutting edge technology that requires a far more complex level of study and thought to master..

[general_re]

I grant I am an oddity, but how did I cast doubt on the theory of the universe?

You are an anomaly, an unresolved equation. Consequently, ergo, viz a viz...

[gitmo]

"Let there be light," still makes more sense to me than any theory I've heard from the goofball scientists.

Big Bang could simply be the physical manifestation of those words. Cosmologist were very nervous about moving into the Big Bang mindset. It has been described as their making it to the peak of a mountain after a dangerous and arduous climb, and finding a happy band of theologians who had been camping there for thousands of years.

[grey_whiskers]

the local group of galaxies, after expanding for billions of years, has started to contract. I wonder what it is about this part of the universe that causes this behavior.

Didn't you hear? It's because California sucks. :-)

Full Disclosure: Tee hee.

[Drammach]

If only they didn't sometimes insist that their theories are as good as facts.

Fact:
The more you know, the more you know you don't know..

[Drammach]

the universe as a whole is expanding, the local group of galaxies, after expanding for billions of years, has started to contract.

Republican response..
The universe is not contracting..
There has simply been a decline in the rate of expansion..

[Old Professer]

4-tee-2

[null and void]

That depends on whether you are golfing or sipping

[rdcorso]

That big bang we are hearing is the ego of the experts exploding into dust.If they really had facts to back up their claims I wouldn't mind but they are passing off guesses as facts.

[RightWhale]

The image from WMAP has always looked like there was some kind of regular structure to it rather than being random. Here is the image. Looks like a Japanese paper lantern.

[longshadow]

I wonder what it is about this part of the universe that causes this behavior.

The "Local Group" is an association of gravitationally bound galaxies. That means they don't have enough relative motion to escape the gravitation of the others in the group. Additionally, the effect of the expansion of space on the Local Group is too small to have any effect. It's just too small a chunk of space for expansion to dominate over local relative motion.

At cosmological scale distances, OTOH, the expansion IS the dominant factor, and the galaxies are NOT gravitationally bound to one another at such distances.

[longshadow]

Now, if someone had come up with inflation prior to the observations,

It was, in the sense that Inflation was put forward BEFORE the COBE and WMAP data on the anisotropy in the CMB was collected. Inflationary theory predicted the observed anisotropy ahead of the observations so accurately it is downright scary.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[SamAdams76]

I believe that the universe is much like the economy. A lot of expansions and contractions. If we can ever figure out how to smooth out the business cycle, then we might be able to tackle the stabilization of the universe.

[UCANSEE2]

huh?

[AdmSmith]

I can't find any other news stories about this "finding" and I can't find Starkman in Physical Review Letters for 2005.

Physical Review Letters
26 November 2004

Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 221301 (2004)
Is the Low-L Microwave Background Cosmic?

Dominik J. Schwarz,1 Glenn D. Starkman,1,2 Dragan Huterer,2 and Craig J. Copi2
1Department of Physics, CERN, Theory Division, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
2Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7079, USA

(Received 26 March 2004; revised 14 September 2004; published 23 November 2004)


The large-angle (low-L) correlations of the cosmic microwave background exhibit several statistically significant anomalies compared to the standard inflationary cosmology. We show that the quadrupole plane and the three octopole planes are far more aligned than previously thought (99.9% C.L.). Three of these planes are orthogonal to the ecliptic at 99.1% C.L., and the normals to these planes are aligned at 99.6% C.L. with the direction of the cosmological dipole and with the equinoxes. The remaining octopole plane is orthogonal to the supergalactic plane at 99.6% C.L. ©2004 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v93/e221301