Thanks for the link. Cool article.
Bob Clark
Robert Karl Stonjek wrote:
'Axis of evil' a cause for cosmic concern
14 April 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Zeeya Merali
SOME believe it is just a figment of overactive imaginations. But evidence
is growing that the so-called "axis of evil" - a pattern apparently
imprinted on the radiation left behind by the big bang - may be real, pos=
ing
a threat to standard cosmology.
According to the standard model, the universe is isotropic, or much the s=
ame
everywhere. The first sign that this might not be the case came in 2005,
when Kate Land and Jo=E3o Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a
curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) creat=
ed
by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots =
in
the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along
what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil.
Some astronomers have suggested straightforward explanations for the axis,
such as problems with WMAP's instruments or distortions caused by a nearby
supercluster (New Scientist, 22 October 2005, p 19).
Others doubt the pattern's very existence. "There's still a fair bit of
controversy about whether there's even something there that needs to be
explained," says WMAP scientist Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flig=
ht
Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Now, two independent studies seem to confirm that it does exist. Damien
Hutsem=E9kers of the University of Li=E8ge in Belgium analysed the polari=
sation
of light from 355 quasars and found that as the quasars get near the axis,
the polarisation becomes more ordered than expected. Taken together, the
polarisation angles from the quasars seem to corkscrew around the axis.
"This is really promising," says Hinshaw. "Cosmologists should sit up and
take notice."
Cosmologist Carlo Contaldi of Imperial College London is intrigued, but
thinks more quasars should be analysed before drawing conclusions. "There=
is
a danger that once people know about the axis of evil, they start seeing
evil in all sorts of sets of data," he says.
The quasar finding has support from another study, however. Michael Longo=
of
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analysed 1660 spiral galaxies from
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the axes of rotation of most
galaxies appear to line up with the axis of evil
(www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0703325). According to Longo, the probability of
this happening by chance is less than 0.4 per cent. "This suggests the ax=
is
is real, and not simply an error in the WMAP data," he says.
Land, now at the University of Oxford, thinks Longo must rule out other
reasons for why the spirals are aligned the way they are. For instance,
neighbouring galaxies could have formed from the same rotating dust cloud,
giving them similar orientations, she says. "But if he is correct, then t=
his
is really exciting, not only as independent confirmation of the axis, but
because it'll help us understand what may have created it," she says.
One way to create the axis was presented by Contaldi at a conference on
outstanding questions in cosmology at Imperial College last month. The
universe is thought to be isotropic because the early universe went throu=
gh
a period of exponential expansion known as inflation, smoothing out any
unevenness. Contaldi and his colleagues Emir G=FCmr=FCk=E7=FCoglu and Mar=
co Peloso
at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, modified inflation to all=
ow
the universe to expand more in one direction. "Provided inflation stops a=
t a
relatively early point, this would leave traces of the early [unevenness]=
in
the form of the axis of evil," he says.
Longo favours a more radical theory proposed by Leonardo Campanelli of the
University of Ferrara, Italy, which suggests that magnetic fields stretch=
ed
across the universe could be responsible (New Scientist, 2 September 2006=
, p
28). "A magnetic field would naturally orient the spiral galaxies," says
Longo.
Regardless of the reasons, one thing is clear: the axis of evil won't be
written off any time soon. "Interest keeps growing as people find more
weirdly connected observations that can't all be put down to coincidence,"
says Land. "And hey, everybody loves a conspiracy."
From issue 2599 of New Scientist magazine, 14 April 2007, page 10
Source: NewScientist
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000?DCMP=3DNLC-nletter&n=
sref=3Dmg19425994.000
Comment:
Once again actual observation contradicts Big Bang mythology - cosmologis=
ts
should spend a little less time interpreting the entrails of freshly
sacrificed chickens and spend a bit more time listening to astronomers who
only join the dots actually observed and not those simply wished for (eg
'inflation').
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
.
