New cosmic look may cast doubts on big bang theory

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Thanks ToSeek, this is an interesting result. I wonder how much of this is related to the beam size of the WMAP probe, and how much is real.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I had a quick look, but couldn't find an online preprint of the ApJ paper - it'd sure be nice to read!

This is the arxive paper, is has been revised many times, the authors have published more on this subject. There's another paper (also linked to in the "WMAP year 2" thread) that shows real problems for BBT with the WMAP anisotropy anomaly.
Have fun.

Cheers.

Thanks VanderL.

The low multipole 'anomalies' in the CMBR are the subject of many papers - as well as the WMAP thread, there are references in the Local Bubble CMB thread, the A General Discussion of the Alternative Approach thread, and likely others too.

The Lieu and Mittaz paper certainly looks interesting! That it took ~7 months from first draft to publication may be an indication of how difficult it is to do this work; as is normal, I would expect a number of papers over the next ~5-10 years poking and prodding in this area ... and WMAP release 2 (not, as most are calling it, 'the second year' of data) may be so exciting (or controversial :P ) that this kind of work gets rocket boosters (or a flaw quickly found, so relegated to 'just history').

Exciting, isn't it?

I started a thread a while back looking for the second year data from WMAP. This was before I'd seen anything referring to "Release 2". The error is mine. In my defense, I exchanged a few emails with Charles Bennett about this, and he never corrected me.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Exciting? I wouldn't call this exciting, more like a confirmation of something already suspected, plus an uncomfortable feeling that the most probable result of theories facing a crisis, is the proposition of something very clever (like String or Multiverse theories) with the tests to prove it somewhere in the "foreseeable future" (always around the next corner). Maybe there will be a new trick to get rid of all those nasty local contributions to the CMBR that in one sweep also solves the rest of the problems. I hope I'm wrong, but let's wait what the WMAP crew will have cooked up for us afer all the delay.

Cheers.

Btw,
it could also mean that the conclusions were a bit hard to swallow for the referees and had to be changed a bit.

For what its worth, and its just an opinion. I am pleased that doubt has been cast by some powerfull minds in the scientific comunity. I have never been impressed with the sudden appearance of a singlarity, and the resolting big bang as a reasonable explanation of the beginning of the Universe.
Does finding cooler spots in the background noise mean that gravity has distorted the uniformaty previously thought to be the norm.
I dont except that there was ever a beginning. Yes I'm a `allways has been here` sort of felow. I have yet to be convinced otherwise.
If gravaty has distorted the uniformaty. Gravaty of what? Was some thing allready here? The void may not be so empty after all. This does not make Albert wrong, its just we have more tools to see with than he had. I will follow this line of thought. We might learn of something bigger than we had thought. :unsure:

I think the finds of galaxies and clusters of galaxies that appear to be fully mature when the universe was supposed to be only a few hundred million years old is the most damning evidence against our current models. I think we have a pretty good understanding of particle interactions, at least enough to make really fast computers with lots of memory. I think we have a pretty good understanding of how gravity effects masses on a local level, like how planets, moons, and other bits and pieces orbit a star, or how a few stars gravitationally interact with each other, but we're way off the mark on the scale of galaxies and above. I don't think there is any huge masses of otherwise invisible and unreactive matter floating around in space. I think we're still just scratching the surface, like during the 1800's and early 1900's when or understand bloomed from knowing what chemical reactions would occur to why they occur, and from how an object in motion would react to why it reacts the way it does, but we will eventually figure it out. The whole Big Bang line of thinking needs a major overhaul or we need to start over from scratch. What do we know? How do we know it? Why do we think we're certain we know it? How do all the things we know we know interrelate?

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

Priceless!

I think this is not quite true. Sure, the findings are not in accordance with expectations, but I always thought that the theorists would find a way out (maybe announce that the Universe was much older than previously thought or something).
I'm wary of what will eventually be the way forward, I hope the scientific commnity can admit that much of the work done over the past decades needs to be reviewed. As you say we actually need to review first what it is we know and why, I guess it's observations first, and theories later.

Cheers.