One side of the universe is different from the other!

[junglelord]

OMG, how insane are these people?
http://space.newscientist.com/article/d ... ad_dn14098

The conclusion, if correct, would shatter a cherished assumption about the universe. "One of the basic tenets of cosmology is that the universe is the same in all directions, and the standard model of inflation is built on that foundation," Erickcek told New Scientist. "If the asymmetry is real, then it tells us that one side of our universe is somehow different than the other side."

Since the CMB is not a picture of the big bang in the first place, the amount of information they deem from it is totally skewed, not the universe. I am so glad I found this forum. Thank goodness for some sanity, otherwise I would be a babbeling idiot, reciting the latest crap from astrophysics.

[rduke]

They just get more and more crazy... How I would love to run into some of these people in a bar or sandwich shop.

Actually I wouldn't because they would be trying to get their drink or sandwich changed between sips and bites

It reeks of a panicked desperation ...These guys know in their heart of hearts that they really have no clue, but they feel this responsibility to the rest of us ... to think for us and show us the way...

It also could be Science based Journalists with nothing to do.... Like hey... shouldn't we all be consumed by the mini black holes of Cern?

Your title made me think of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZIvgQ9ik48

And that actually made me feel better.

[Grey Cloud]

As usual the comedic value outstripped any intellectual value. Did you check out the link in the article to 'The Axis of Evil'?
http://space.newscientist.com/article/m ... ncern.html

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.

Since when has 'evil' been a scientific term?

[webolife]

Moving through the universal field, a unified field of centropic vectors, we naturally must experience a difference of pressure moving away from the center versus toward it, and clearly our galaxy and we with it, are charging through space at a high rate (300+ miles per sec) in the direction of one side of the universe... yes I said side. I realize some folks here believe in an infinite universe... I do not. This is the asymmetry shown in the CMB dipole.
IMHO

[junglelord]

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 through a period of exponential expansion known as inflation, smoothing out any unevenness. Contaldi and his colleagues Emir Gümrükçüoğlu and Marco Peloso at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, modified inflation to allow the universe to expand more in one direction. "Provided inflation stops at a relatively early point, this would leave traces of the early [unevenness] in the form of the axis of evil," he says.

“A map of the cosmic microwave background seems to show that hot and cold spots are not distributed randomly”

Longo favours a more radical theory proposed by Paolo Cea of the University of Bari, in Italy, and Leonardo Campanelli of the University of Ferrara, Italy, which suggests that magnetic fields stretched 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."

It does not say from where that term originates..."axis of evil", I thought George Bush made that up....maybe thats the relationship....madeup stuff.

They think its radical to have magnetic fields as the origin of the axis...I could say thats true, a magnetic field with no current is radical....well maybe not to them.

[Grey Cloud]

According to the standard model, the universe is isotropic, or much the same everywhere. However, in 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College Londonnoticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created 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.

The quote is from
http://space.newscientist.com/article/m ... ncern.html

[junglelord]

Well I guess it makes sense in a fairy tale world, to have made-up definitions.

[StevenO]

As usual the comedic value outstripped any intellectual value. Did you check out the link in the article to 'The Axis of Evil'?
http://space.newscientist.com/article/m ... ncern.html

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.

Since when has 'evil' been a scientific term?

Maybe that 'dark side' will help them to see the light...
Same article:

Longo favours a more radical theory proposed by Paolo Cea of the University of Bari, in Italy, and Leonardo Campanelli of the University of Ferrara, Italy, which suggests that magnetic fields stretched 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."

But....since when are magnetic fields more "radical" than an "axis of evil" ?????

[Grey Cloud]

Perhaps plasma should be promoted as 'the Force'. Obi Wal Thornhill?

[MGmirkin]

suggests that magnetic fields stretched across the universe could be responsible(New Scientist, 2 September 2006, p 28). "A magnetic field would naturally orient the spiral galaxies," says Longo.

Perhaps they should read Section 5: The Universal Domain of the "Electricity and Plasma, from Micro to Macro and Beyond..."thread.

Specifically the sections on:

(99.999% plasma)
http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.ph ... %25_plasma

(Double radio sources and the new approach to cosmical plasma physics)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978Ap%26SS..54..279A

(Evolution of the Plasma Universe: I. Double Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and Extragalactic Jets)
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloadsC ... 6TPS-I.pdf

(Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies)
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloadsC ... TPS-II.pdf

(On the Origin of Cosmic Magnetic Fields.)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961ApJ...133.1049A

(Evolution of Colliding Plasmas)
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloads/ ... ielsen.pdf

(Interstellar Neutral Hydrogen Filaments at High Galactic Latitudes and the Bennett Pinch)
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloads/ ... urAPSS.pdf

(Galaxies Formed Along Filaments Like Beads on a String)
http://digg.com/space/Galaxies_formed_a ... n_a_string

(Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter, Probes Intergalactic Web)
http://digg.com/space/Hubble_Survey_Fin ... ctic_Web_3

(The Universe in Hot Gas; "...in Plasma," to be Precise)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020820.html

Magnetic fields strung throughout the universe, indeed! But why? Only because there are electric currents in the universal plasma giving rise to the magnetic fields, and electric currents in plasma tend toward filamentation. So, it shouldn't be a shocker, unless they've been ignoring plasma physics, Alfvén, electricity, Maxwell, novelty plasma lamps, etc.

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[junglelord]

I think they should take up jobs as philosophers. A lot of that going round, trying to pass itself off as science. Some of the best word games on the planet and the internet.

[StefanR]

Practising double-speak is one sign of tyranny.
Don't blame philosophy for a bad education, maybe it would be better if they join their club in the political arena or if they have
some emotional tendency, the sports pages might do fine.

It's maybe not so much wordgames, as it seems to be bread and games all over again.
Now if you would excuse me, I have to go to the arena for some football championships,

[MGmirkin]

It's maybe not so much wordgames, as it seems to be bread and games all over again.
Now if you would excuse me, I have to go to the arena for some football championships,

Sounds a bit Romanesque...

"Give them their daily bread and their coliseum..." Or some such. I forget the exact quote.

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[StefanR]

Sounds a bit Romanesque...

Yes indeed, was inspired by my visit there.
I meant the hint, in the way that NewScientist isn't actually a real science magazine, in my opinion that is. Although it brings news and articles on lots of scientific-like subjects. But it always cloaks just little bits of news in a mass of fairytale drivel made up by the journalist. So to me it's more entertainment than actual science.

But going back to the openingpost of Junglelord, I have a little trouble understanding here. When I read the article I seem to get the impression that

Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, the chief scientist for the WMAP mission, notes that Erickcek's team has predicted additional subtle differences in the CMB compared to the standard inflation picture.

These predictions could be tested when more sensitive CMB maps are available. "It might be within reach of WMAP, and it will be within reach of Planck," he told New Scientist, referring to the European Space Agency satellite scheduled to launch later in 2008 to scrutinise the CMB.
Mysterious era

If further observations bear out the scenario, it would provide some precious new information about the universe's earliest moments, about which little is known. "It was a period of extremely rapid expansion, but what drove that expansion and how long it lasted is an open question," Erickcek says.

Alan Guth of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, one of the scientists who pioneered the inflation idea in the 1980s, says inflation is only the framework of a theory, with many details remaining to be filled in.

He says the team's "well thought-out" analysis is just the kind of thing needed to help do that. "Although the hint [from asymmetry] may very well turn out to be a fluke, it is only by pursuing such hints that new ideas will be generated, and that ultimately we will have a chance to find the right theory," he told New Scientist.

Charles Bennet is doing all he can to remain in funding till he retires, but what Alan Guth seems to say I do not quite get.