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Originally Posted by Cougar
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Originally Posted by Jerry
The CMB has three features that were not expected/predicted: Anisotrophy, measurable three sigm 'hot' and 'cold' spots...
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Which is attributable to what? You're not the only one who would like to know. |
The
primary evidence that the CMB was primal was the uniform temperature. Evidence that it is less than uniform is contraindicative of the BB thesis. Since these variations are very small, they do not kill the theory, but they do invite alternative explanations.
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Originally Posted by Cougar
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Originally Posted by Jerry
...a dipole that aligns with the solar system....
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Screening out known contaminants is a tricky business. |
...and assumptive: We just learned that magnetic reconnection events involves energy densities that are a full magnitude greater than predicted or expected. We learned in 1996 comets emit Xrays. Jupiter is a major source of microwaves; they were used to calibrate the WMAP probe, but nobody really knows why Jupiter is such a strong emitter. Saturn has almost global auroras, also a stunning surprise. The alignment of the oddball features in the CMB with the Zodiac is at least a strong caution flag: What else is going on out there?
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Originally Posted by Cougar
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Originally Posted by Jerry
The CMB lacks the polarization predicted by inflation theory.
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That's funny - I heard just the opposite... |
The measured polarization is two magnitudes less than
prior inflationary predictions; and in any case, there are known calibration weaknesses in both the WMAP and COBE probes. (WMAP relied upon COBE measurements to calibrate the primary antenna, COBE lacked a stable clock.) It will be interesting to see how the PLANCK background mapping compares with these earlier studies. If the calibration is independant of the earlier measurements, I don't think Planck will find the same signature.