The fifth year of data comes from observations made between summer of 2005 and 2006, I think. Now, assuming that Mr. Butterworth is correct and the data is released in a couple of months, then this will mean that the WMAP team spent almost two years analyzing the 5-yr data. Mr. Butterworth, however, said back around the time of the long-delayed 3-yr data release that the next data releases would occur on a more regular annual schedule; the reason being: the polarization data was difficult to analyze because of foregrounds and the inherent weakness of the signal and so "new tools" had to be developed. In other words, the WMAP team had to invent new analytical tools to interpret, work with, and draw conclusions based on the polarization signal. So, if these new tools were developed for the 3 yr data and have been in place, then why is the 5-yr release taking so long? Is it because the WMAP team detected lensing, or some other exciting phenomenon and they want to be absolutely sure before they publish? Anyhow, it will be interesting to see what happens...

In a prior post it was stated "the Science Team needs to do additional work to understand the calibration of the instrument to sub-percent levels, but we expect to release 5-year data before the end of this year."

Additional work to understand the calibration means the data is not falling into place as well as expected: They couldn't use the methods developed in the analysis the three year data to crank out cohesive results. In the three year data, the 'recalibration' involved a thermal correction matrix to the data, pixel by pixel.

So will it be a polhode moment this time, or patch effects? Or the 'right combination of both".

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Throwing around vague innuendo about WMAP calibration being suspect seems to be the order of the day for ATM minded persons. I don't comment on these unspecified claims, but just note that nobody in the research community has made them in peer reviewed articles or otherwise.

Yo!

NASA: Five Year Results on the Oldest Light in the Universe -- WMAP 5-year Results Released - March 5, 2008

Smile for the camera


BA Blog: The Universe is 13.73 +/- .12 billion years old!

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Glad to see it. I'll read a few of the papers tonight.
Does anyone know if that's the end, or will there also be a seven year release?
Planck should launch soon. It'll be interesting to compare the results in three of four years.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I have a simple question..."What is the principle source of noise in the third plotted peak?....the error bars are distinctly larger than in the first two peaks.

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

Another astro-blogger (Cosmic Variance) comments:

WMAP 5-Year Results Released

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Are you referring to the CMB Angular Spectrum graph?

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If he is, it's clear that the data spread is much wider. See this graph that includes the data points.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Point Source Contamination in CMB Non-Gaussianity Analyses

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

ToSeek. Yep, that's it, and Jerry that's it. Thanks pete.

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

Didn't take long:

A high-significance detection of non-Gaussianity in the WMAP 5-year data using directional spherical wavelets

Out dam spot!

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/p...804.0425v1.pdf

Non-Gaussianity from Symmetry
Ever since the COBE presented us with large scale CMB anisotropy, cosmologists have been grasping at strings to explain it. So why not a superstring?

This is an interesting approach, and even predicts a possible 'smoking gun'. But as always, agreement of a model with observations is never proof of the model, only evidence that the model as is is not nulled by this family of evidence.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.