DOCSLIB.ORG

Why Is the Solar System Cosmically Aligned? the Solar System Seems to Line up with the Largest Cosmic Features

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Why Is the Solar System Cosmically Aligned? the Solar System Seems to Line up with the Largest Cosmic Features Cosmology Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights? ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ BY DRAGAN HUTERER magine visiting a Museum of Cos- a good distance away from the display to mology, where the signature display get a better perspective, you notice the is a giant case that contains a realistic larger structures: star clusters and galaxies, model of the observable universe. each containing a sea of suns. Stepping Herein lie all the stars and galaxies back farther, you start to discern a web of we can see from Earth — the parts of the filaments in the vastness, and notice that Iuniverse from which light has had enough clusters of galaxies lie at the intersections of time to reach us in the 13.7 billion years the largest filaments. At this distance from since the Big Bang. The museum curators the display, you can see patterns that extend have done an excellent job, and the model 45 billion light-years, all the way out to the is complete with planets, stars, and galaxies. edge of the observable universe. As you stand in front of the display and Intrigued by this zoo of structures on squint, you can barely discern the smallest- different scales, you walk over to the oppo- scale features: billions of individual stars, site end of the huge Main Hall to get a many with planets and moons. As you step sense of the big picture. And you are 38 astronomy ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ December 07 Cool lobe Ecliptic plane THE COSMIC microwave back- ground (CMB) is a relic from the early universe. Scientists represent it as a complex pattern of warm and cool spots, or “lobes,” pro- jected onto the celestial sphere Warm lobe around Earth. The patterns, which reflect large-scale structures pres- ent in the early universe, line up with the solar system in strange and as-yet-unexplained ways. ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY; MULtiPOLE MAP: DRAGAN HUTERER The CMB in cosmic history view, we could only see galaxies that are no First stars farther than 45 billion light-years from us. appear Dark energy accelerates Light from the more distant objects simply 380,000 years universe’s expansion after Big Bang has not had time to reach us yet. To map the universe’s structure we lusters evolve Galaxies, galaxy c would need something like a fossil record preserving information about conditions in the early universe, when the seeds were planted that grew into structures we Big WMAP observe 13.7 billion years later. Bang Universe expands Fortunately, we have such a fossil. It’s called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories discovered it in 1965. In the early universe, photons (particles of light with zero mass) and protons and electrons (particles found in atoms) swarmed in a dense mass, like a vast num- ber of bees trapped in a box. Around CMB map by Wilkinson Microwave 380,000 years after the Big Bang, however, Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) an important transition occurred: The expanding universe became transparent to radiation, and the photons were free to travel. Today we observe the CMB as a fog of microwave photons coming at us from all directions, filling the entire universe. IN THE FIRST moments after the Big Bang, the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion. About 380,000 years later, the universe expanded enough to become trans- Cosmic snapshot parent to radiation. From that time forward, particles of light (photons) traveled freely throughout the cosmos. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a record of the The CMB is a snapshot of the early uni- universe’s state at that moment. As the universe expanded, stars and galaxies evolved. verse. After the Big Bang, gravity drew the Later, large-scale structures such as galaxy clusters emerged. The Wilkinson Microwave densest regions together. These concentra- Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mapped the cosmic microwave background. NASA/WMAP SciENCE TEAM tions of matter evolved over eons of time into galaxies, galaxy clusters, and all the shocked to see vast patterns within all those how could the early universe possibly have other cosmic structures we observe today. stars and galaxies that seem to line up with “known” about the solar system’s geometry The less-dense, rarefied regions evolved the direction of the Sun’s motion through when it developed 4.5 billion years ago? into vast expanses of cosmic emptiness, the universe. Even stranger, some aspects of Could such a bizarre alignment have arisen filling the space between galaxies. You can the cosmic geometry seem more flattened in the early universe, or is the answer in the see the results of gravitational collapse in than spherical, and line up nearly perpen- solar system itself — some as-yet-unknown the night sky as a seemingly random pat- dicular to the plane along which the planets factor that skews our observations? tern of stars and galaxies. race around the Sun. The quest for an answer has whetted the The CMB’s temperature is nearly uni- In reality, you would need a very special appetites of cosmologists to understand the form across the sky, measuring just 2.73 kind of vision to see the alignments cos- structure of the universe on its largest Kelvin, or 2.73° Celsius above absolute zero. mologists have begun to find in the geo- scales. Moreover, solving the mystery of But the CMB is not completely uniform; it metry of the universe. Seeing them requires cosmic alignments may ultimately require contains many small patches where the sophisticated mathematical analysis that us to revise some bedrock assumptions of background temperature is warmer or enables us to explore the finest details of modern cosmology and what happened in cooler, varying slightly above and below how the universe is put together. the first moments after the Big Bang. 2.73 K. These variations in the sea of radia- Careful analyses have confirmed these tion are small, about one part in 100,000, or alignments exist. But we don’t know A look in the microwave equivalent to the roughness of dust on a whether they are bizarre coincidences or if With modern telescopes and sensitive billiard ball’s surface. something more fundamental is at work. instruments, we can observe distant galax- The CMB’s rough spots, called anisotro- The origins of the universe’s structure lie ies and clusters of galaxies, and accurately pies, reflect inhomogeneity in the early uni- in the first moments after the Big Bang. But map their distribution. Unfortunately, it’s verse — ripples, if you will, on the surface not possible to “zoom out” from our pres- of the vast photon sea that existed after the Dragan Huterer is a theoretical cosmologist ent moment in time and space to observe Big Bang. Unlike stars, anisotropies in the and a professor in the department of physics at the entire universe. Moreover, even with a CMB are extremely faint, invisible to the the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. perfect telescope and nothing blocking our naked eye and even to most telescopes. 40 astronomy ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ December 07 In 1992, the Cosmic Background astronomers to more Mapping the CMB: Explorer (COBE) satellite famously accurately measure the our evolving view mapped the anisotropies for the first time. abundance of dark Seeing COBE’s map of the CMB, cosmolo- matter, the stuff in gist Stephen Hawking proclaimed it “the and around galaxies The CMB mapped onto the discovery of the millennium, if not all that we can’t see celestial sphere. time,” precisely because COBE had detected with conventional the seeds of all cosmic structure today. telescopes but still Later, scientists mapped out the CMB at has gravity. much higher resolution with another space Finally, with WMAP Penzias & Wilson telescope, the Wilkinson Microwave we can also study dark 1965 Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Its remarkable energy, the mysterious component findings — first published in 2003 and still causing the universe to expand at continually refined as WMAP continues its an ever-faster rate. observations — have revolutionized our understanding of the universe. The cosmic orchestra Within each square degree of sky, Just looking at the WMAP WMAP revealed many finer variations in picture of the universe reveals only the CMB’s temperature. It was like switch- so much information. More valuable ing from a handheld magnifying glass to a insights await discovery in the underlying microscope. Cosmologists use WMAP data patterns of warm and cool spots in the COBE to measure the distribution of anisotropies microwave map. Mathematics allows 1992 and compare it to what current theories us to break down the speckles predict. WMAP’s observations also enable into more fundamental patterns and probe the underlying pro- cesses that produced the CMB’s complexity. We do this by describing the pattern of warm and cool spots in terms of math- ematical functions called multipoles. To understand the multipoles, think of the microwave background as a cosmic WMAP orchestra with a large number of 2003 instruments, each playing a sim- ple musical part. The simultane- ous performance of all these individual parts adds up to a symphony. But what if you wanted to focus on a particular portion of the whole, like the string ch E T section, or even a single violin? CAL For analyzing music, you would per- WE OBSERVE the CMB on the sky, so it form a Fourier analysis. When a violinist can be mapped onto a sphere. But to UPON SEEING bows a string to make a high C note, the make the entire CMB visible on the page, anisotropies in the sound actually contains many individual scientists map it onto an oval.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Science from Litebird
    Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2012, 00000 (27 pages) DOI: 10.1093=ptep/0000000000 Science from LiteBIRD LiteBIRD Collaboration: (Fran¸coisBoulanger, Martin Bucher, Erminia Calabrese, Josquin Errard, Fabio Finelli, Masashi Hazumi, Sophie Henrot-Versille, Eiichiro Komatsu, Paolo Natoli, Daniela Paoletti, Mathieu Remazeilles, Matthieu Tristram, Patricio Vielva, Nicola Vittorio) 8/11/2018 ............................................................................... The LiteBIRD satellite will map the temperature and polarization anisotropies over the entire sky in 15 microwave frequency bands. These maps will be used to obtain a clean measurement of the primordial temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in the multipole range 2 ` 200: The LiteBIRD sensitivity will be better than that of the ESA Planck satellite≤ by≤ at least an order of magnitude. This document summarizes some of the most exciting new science results anticipated from LiteBIRD. Under the conservatively defined \full success" criterion, LiteBIRD will 3 measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter r with σ(r = 0) < 10− ; enabling either a discovery of primordial gravitational waves from inflation, or possibly an upper bound on r; which would rule out broad classes of inflationary models. Upon discovery, LiteBIRD will distinguish between two competing origins of the gravitational waves; namely, the quantum vacuum fluctuation in spacetime and additional matter fields during inflation. We also describe how, under the \extra success" criterion using data external to Lite- BIRD, an even better measure of r will be obtained, most notably through \delensing" and improved subtraction of polarized synchrotron emission using data at lower frequen- cies. LiteBIRD will also enable breakthrough discoveries in other areas of astrophysics. We highlight the importance of measuring the reionization optical depth τ at the cosmic variance limit, because this parameter must be fixed in order to allow other probes to measure absolute neutrino masses.
    [Show full text]
  • Obtaining the Best Cosmological Information from CMB, CMB Lensing and Galaxy Information
    Obtaining the best cosmological information from CMB, CMB lensing and galaxy information. Larissa Santos P.H.D thesis in Astronomy Supervisors: Amedeo Balbi and Paolo Cabella Rome 2012 Contents 1 Prologue 1 2 Introduction: The standard cosmology 3 2.1 The ΛCDM model: an overview . .3 2.2 The expanding universe . .4 2.2.1 The Friedmann Robertson-Walker metric . .4 2.2.2 Cosmological distances . .5 2.3 The discovery of CMB . .6 2.4 Temperature anisotropies . .7 2.4.1 Primary temperature anisotropies . .8 2.4.2 Secondary temperature anisotropies . .9 2.5 CMB temperature angular power spectrum . 10 2.6 Cosmological parameters . 12 2.7 Polarization . 13 2.8 The matter power spectrum . 16 2.9 The ΛCDM model + primordial isocurvature fluctuations . 17 2.10 The CDM model + massive neutrinos + time evolving dark en- ergy equation of state . 19 2.11 The script of the present thesis . 20 I Asymmetries in the angular distribution of the CMB 22 3 The WMAP satellite and used dataset 23 3.1 Internal linear combination maps . 24 3.2 The WMAP masks . 25 4 The quadrant asymmetry 28 4.1 Mehod: The two-point angular correlation function . 29 4.2 Results . 30 4.2.1 The cold spot . 38 i 4.3 Discussion . 38 4.4 Conclusions . 41 II Constraining cosmological parameters 43 5 The Planck satellite 44 6 The SDSS galaxy survey 46 7 Mixed models (adiabatic + isocurvature initial fluctuations) 48 7.1 Isocurvature notation . 48 7.2 Methodology . 49 7.2.1 Information from CMB . 49 7.2.2 Information from galaxy survey .
    [Show full text]
  • Physics of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy∗
    Physics of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy∗ Martin Bucher Laboratoire APC, Universit´eParis 7/CNRS B^atiment Condorcet, Case 7020 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France [email protected] and Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban 4041, South Africa January 20, 2015 Abstract Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), especially of its frequency spectrum and its anisotropies, both in temperature and in polarization, have played a key role in the development of modern cosmology and our understanding of the very early universe. We review the underlying physics of the CMB and how the primordial temperature and polarization anisotropies were imprinted. Possibilities for distinguish- ing competing cosmological models are emphasized. The current status of CMB ex- periments and experimental techniques with an emphasis toward future observations, particularly in polarization, is reviewed. The physics of foreground emissions, especially of polarized dust, is discussed in detail, since this area is likely to become crucial for measurements of the B modes of the CMB polarization at ever greater sensitivity. arXiv:1501.04288v1 [astro-ph.CO] 18 Jan 2015 1This article is to be published also in the book \One Hundred Years of General Relativity: From Genesis and Empirical Foundations to Gravitational Waves, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity," edited by Wei-Tou Ni (World Scientific, Singapore, 2015) as well as in Int. J. Mod. Phys. D (in press).
    [Show full text]
  • Physics of the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Planck Mission
    Physics of the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Planck Mission H. Kurki-Suonio Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, and Helsinki Institute of Physics, Finland Abstract This lecture is a sketch of the physics of the cosmic microwave background. The observed anisotropy can be divided into four main contributions: varia- tions in the temperature and gravitational potential of the primordial plasma, Doppler effect from its motion, and a net red/blueshift the photons accumulate from traveling through evolving gravitational potentials on their way from the primordial plasma to here. These variations are due to primordial perturba- tions, probably caused by quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. The ongoing Planck satellite mission to observe the cosmic microwave background is also described. 1 Introduction The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is radiation that comes from the early universe. In the early universe, ordinary matter was in the form of hot hydrogen and helium plasma which was almost homoge- neously distributed in space. Almost all electrons were free. Because of scattering from these electrons, the mean free path of photons was short compared to cosmological distance scales: the universe was opaque. As the universe expanded, this plasma cooled, and first the helium ions, then also the hydrogen ions captured the free electrons: the plasma was converted into gas and the universe became transparent. After that the photons of the thermal radiation of this primordial plasma have travelled through the uni- verse and we observe them today as the CMB. The CMB is close to isotropic, i.e., the microwave sky appears almost equally bright in every direction.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:1707.09220V1 [Astro-Ph.CO] 28 Jul 2017
    An Introduction to the Planck Mission David L. Clementsa aPhysics Department, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK ARTICLE HISTORY Compiled July 31, 2017 ABSTRACT The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe. It is seen today as black body radiation at a near-uniform temperature of 2.73K covering the entire sky. This radiation field is not perfectly uniform, but includes within it temperature anisotropies of order ∆T=T ∼ 10−5. Physical processes in the early universe have left their fingerprints in these CMB anisotropies, which later grew to become the galaxies and large scale structure we see today. CMB anisotropy observations are thus a key tool for cosmology. The Planck Mission was the Euro- pean Space Agency's (ESA) probe of the CMB. Its unique design allowed CMB anisotropies to be measured to greater precision over a wider range of scales than ever before. This article provides an introduction to the Planck Mission, includ- ing its goals and motivation, its instrumentation and technology, the physics of the CMB, how the contaminating astrophysical foregrounds were overcome, and the key cosmological results that this mission has so far produced. KEYWORDS cosmology; Planck mission; astrophysics; space astronomy; cosmic microwave background 1. Introduction The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson using an absolute radiometer working at a wavelength of 7 cm [1]. It was one of the great serendipitous discoveries of science since the radiometer was intended as a low-noise ground station for the Echo satellites and Penzias and Wilson were looking for a source of excess noise rather than trying to make a fundamental observation in cosmology.
    [Show full text]
  • Is the Cosmic "Axis of Evil" Due to a Large-Scale Magnetic Field?
    March 27, 2007 Is the Cosmic "Axis of Evil" due to a Large-Scale Magnetic Field? Michael J. Longo University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 I propose a mechanism that would explain the near alignment of the low order multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This mechanism sup- poses a large-scale cosmic magnetic field that tends to align the cyclotron orbit axes of electrons in hot plasmas along the same direction. Inverse Compton scattering of the CMB photons then imprints this pattern on the CMB, thus causing the low- ! multipoles to be generally aligned. The spins of the majority of spiral galaxies and that of our own Galaxy appear to be aligned along the cosmic magnetic field. Results from surveys of the cosmic microwave background, notably the Wilkinson Micro- wave Cosmic Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) [1], show remarkable agreement with the simplest in- flation model. However, this tidy picture is marred by anomalies in the low order multipoles of the distribution. These include a near alignment of the quadrupole and octopole axes and a sup- pression of power in the low- ! multipoles. [See, for example, Refs. 2,3.] The probability that these alignments could happen by chance is estimated to be <<0.1%. [3] This bizarre alignment has been dubbed "the Axis of Evil" (AE). [4] The dipole is also found to lie along the same di- rection. Since the dipole is commonly assumed to be due to our motion through the rest frame of the CMB, the alignment of the dipole was thought to be a coincidence.
    [Show full text]
  • Gravitational Hydrodynamics of Large Scale Structure Formation
    epl draft Gravitational hydrodynamics of large scale structure formation Th. M. Nieuwenhuizen1(a), C. H. Gibson2(b), and R. E. Schild3(c) 1 Institute for Theoretical Physics, Valckenierstraat 65, 1018 XE Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 Mech. and Aerosp. Eng. & Scripps Institution of Oceanogr. Depts., UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA 3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA PACS 98.80.Bp { Origin and formation of the universe PACS 95.35.+d { Dark matter PACS 98.20.Jp { Globular clusters in external galaxies Abstract. - The gravitational hydrodynamics of the primordial plasma with neutrino hot dark matter is considered as a challenge to the bottom-up cold dark matter paradigm. Viscosity and turbulence induce a top-down fragmentation scenario before and at decoupling. The first step is the creation of voids in the plasma, which expand to 37 Mpc on the average now. The remaining matter clumps turn into galaxy clusters. At decoupling galaxies and proto-globular star clusters arise; the latter constitute the galactic dark matter halos and consist themselves of earth-mass MBD. Frozen MBDare observed in microlensing and white-dwarf-heated ones in planetary nebulae. The approach explains the Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson relations, and cosmic microwave temperature fluctuations of micro-Kelvins. (a) [email protected] the first stars should be 100-1000 M population III su- (b)[email protected] perstars. OGCs do not spin rapidly so they cannot be (c)[email protected] condensations, and their small stars imply gentle flows in- consistent with superstars. Other difficulties are posed by Introduction.
    [Show full text]
  • Detection of Artificially Injected Signals in the Cosmic Microwave Background
    Detection of artificially injected signals in the cosmic microwave background Sophie Zhang∗ Department of Physics, University of Michigan, 450 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Advisor: Professor Dragan Huterery Department of Physics, University of Michigan, 450 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Background and purpose: One of the triumphs of modern cosmology has been the detection and measurement of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang. Though almost completely uniform, it contains inhomogeneities on the order of 10−5, one part in 100; 000, imparting important information regarding the nature of our universe. One of the questions cosmologists today must consider is if our standard cosmological model is an accurate descrip- tion of the universe, or if pieces are missing. Detection of anomalies, such as odd alignments in multipole vectors or unusually hot/cold regions of the sky, could provide evidence for missing pieces in our understanding of the universe. However, in order to detect such anomalies, one must first devise efficient search techniques to find them. Signal injection: In order to test the effectiveness of our search methods, we explore the topic of signal injection. We generate random Gaussian statistically isotropic full-sky maps based on our current ΛCDM best-fit cosmological model. Then, we artificially induce a signal in the map - for instance, by adding a cold spot of particular shape or size into the map. Finally, we use our existing techniques to search for the signal we added, to determine the efficiency of our search techniques and the minimum strength required for the signal before detection is possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Preferred Axis in the Cmb Parity Asymmetry
    Chapter 6 PREFERRED AXIS IN THE CMB PARITY ASYMMETRY L. Santos1, W. Zhao11 CAS Key Laboratory for Researches in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University os Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 23002, China. ABSTRACT Recent observations, such as the anomalies in the temperature angular distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), indicate a preferred direction in the Universe. However, the foundation of modern cosmology relies on homogeneity and isotropy of the matter distribution on large scales. Here, we considered the preferred axis in the CMB parity violation. We found that this axis coincides with the preferred axes of the CMB quadrupole and octopole, and they all align with the direction of the CMB kinematic dipole, which has not a cosmological origin. The coincidence of these preferred directions hints that these anomalies do have a common origin which is not cosmological or due to a gravitational effect. However, the origin of the CMB anomalies is still an open question in cosmology. Keywords: cosmic microwave background radiation, cosmological observations, data analysis, statistical methods 1 Corresponding Author address Email: [email protected] 5.1 Anomalies in the CMB temperature distribution 5. 1. 1 Introduction The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is one of our best cosmological observables. It provides a powerful test of the standard cosmological model, known as the LCDM model + inflation. The most accurate CMB full-sky dataset to date is provided by the Planck satellite, and its consistency with the flat six-parameter standard model is outstanding [1]. Other cosmological observations also support the LCDM model, including the distribution of large-scale structure, Type Ia supernovae, the baryon acoustic oscillation and the cosmic weak lensing.
    [Show full text]
  • Scalar Fields and Alternatives in Cosmology and Black Holes
    Scalar Fields and Alternatives in Cosmology and Black Holes A thesis submitted in partial ful¯lment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics in the University of Canterbury by Ben Maitland Leith University of Canterbury 2007 ii Disclaimer The work described in this thesis was carried out under the supervision of Dr D.L. Wiltshire in the Department of Astronomy and Physics, University of Canterbury. Chapters three{¯ve are comprised of original work except where explicit reference is made to the work of others. Chapter three is based on work done in collaboration with Alex Nielsen and submitted to Phys. Rev. D. [arxiv:0709.2541]. Part of chapter four is based on work done in collaboration with Ishwaree Neupane, published in JCAP 0705, 019 (2007), further work was done individually and will appear in a forthcoming paper. Chapter ¯ve is based on work done in collaboration with Benedict Carter, Cindy Ng, Alex Nielsen and David Wiltshire in arxiv:astro-ph/0504192, and a further paper, with Cindy Ng and David Wiltshire submitted to Astrophys. J. [arxiv:0709.2535]. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any degree, diploma or other quali¯cation at any other University. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, David Wiltshire, for his support and guidance, and Ishwaree Neupane, Alex Nielsen, Benedict Carter and Cindy Ng for their fruitful collaborations. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their constant support. iii iv Contents Overview 1 1 Introduction to General Relativity 3 1.1 Homogeneous Cosmology and the Current Concordance Model .
    [Show full text]
  • Does the Universe Have a Handedness?
    Does the Universe Have a Handedness? Michael J. Longo University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 I have studied the distribution of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether the universe has an overall handedness. A preference for spiral galaxies in one sector of the sky to be left-handed or right-handed spirals would indicate a preferred axis in the Universe. The SDSS data show a strong signal for such an asymmetry. Its axis seems to be strongly corre- lated with that of the dipole, quadrupole and octopole moments in the WMAP microwave sky survey, whose unlikely alignment has been dubbed "the Axis of Evil". Our Galaxy has its spin axis along the same direction. I propose a mechanism that explains all of these align- ments in terms of a large-scale cosmic magnetic field. GLCW8 - 1 (a) A hypothetical universe with all galaxies having the same handedness. Note that galaxies in one hemisphere would appear to us to be right-handed and in the opposite hemisphere left-handed. (b) A “typical” spiral galaxy from the SDSS. This one is defined as having right-handed “spin”. (c) A left-handed two-armed spiral galaxy. GLCW8 - 2 The Sloan Digital Sky Survey The SDSS DR5 database contains ~40000 galaxies with spectra for redshifts <0.04 with a wide coverage in right ascensions (RA) and a more limited range of declina- tions ( ). A few percent of these are spiral galaxies that can be used in a search for a preferred handedness. GLCW8 - 3 A few "typical" Galaxies from the Sloan Survey GLCW8 - 4 The SDSS sky coverage is, of course, far from complete.
    [Show full text]
  • Probing the Early Universe with the CMB Scalar, Vector and Tensor Bispectrum
    Probing the Early Universe with the CMB Scalar, Vector and Tensor Bispectrum Maresuke Shiraishi November 1, 2018 arXiv:1210.2518v2 [astro-ph.CO] 23 May 2013 Abstract Although cosmological observations suggest that the fluctuations of seed fields are almost Gaus- sian, the possibility of a small deviation of their fields from Gaussianity is widely discussed. The- oretically, there exist numerous inflationary scenarios which predict large and characteristic non- Gaussianities in the primordial perturbations. These model-dependent non-Gaussianities act as sources of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) bispectrum; therefore, the analysis of the CMB bispectrum is very important and attractive in order to clarify the nature of the early Uni- verse. Currently, the impacts of the primordial non-Gaussianities in the scalar perturbations, where the rotational and parity invariances are kept, on the CMB bispectrum have been well-studied. However, for a complex treatment, the CMB bispectra generated from the non-Gaussianities, which originate from the vector- and tensor-mode perturbations and include the violation of the rotational or parity invariance, have never been considered in spite of the importance of this information. On the basis of our current studies [1{7], this thesis provides the general formalism for the CMB bispectrum sourced by the non-Gaussianities not only in the scalar-mode perturbations but also in the vector- and tensor-mode perturbations. Applying this formalism, we calculate the CMB bispectrum from two scalars and a graviton correlation and that from primordial magnetic fields, and we then outline new constraints on these amplitudes. Furthermore, this formalism can be easily extended to the cases where the rotational or parity invariance is broken.
    [Show full text]