Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil

Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil: "The overall conclusion is that standard cosmology is an extremely good match to Planck data," said Efstathiou. "If I were an inflationary theorist I would be extremely happy."

...Planck reveals that one half of the universe has bigger variations than the other. Planck's detectors are over 10 times more sensitive and have about 2.5 times the angular resolution of WMAP's, giving cosmologists a much better look at this alignment. "We can be extremely confident that these anomalies are not caused by galactic emissions and not caused by instrumental effects..."

Galactic 'axis of asymmetry' threatens cosmic order - New Scientist - New Scientist

Galactic 'axis of asymmetry' threatens cosmic order: In most directions, Longo found an even spread of right and left-handed galaxies. But when he looked along a line about 25 degrees off from the direction of the Milky Way's north pole - a cosmic reference point that sits directly above the centre of our galaxy - he found more left-handed spirals than right-handed ones...
Now, Lior Shamir of the Lawrence Technological University at Southfield, Michigan, has automated the process and looked deeper into space. His software classified the handedness of almost 250,000 spiral galaxies up to 3.4 billion light years away, which were surveyed by SDSS and another project called the Galaxy Zoo...

This time, though, the axis of asymmetry pointed about 60 degrees to the other side of the Milky Way's north pole (see diagram). Despite being separated by 85 degrees, both axes have such large uncertainties that they could be aspects of the same axis.
"The observation is so strange that it's difficult to interpret its meaning," says Shamir. "A pattern in the structure of the universe at such a large scale is not something that we expect to see."

Original spin: Was the universe born whirling? - space - 17 October 2011 - New Scientist

Original spin: Was the universe born whirling?: All other things being equal, you would have expected these galaxies generally to be spinning in random directions, according to local conditions when they formed. And that indeed was the case. In most sectors of the northern sky, equal numbers of galaxies were rotating to the right, or clockwise, and to the left, anticlockwise. But along one direction, at about 10 degrees to our own galaxy's spin axis, there were more left-handed spirals than right-handed ones...
"If this asymmetry is real, it means the universe has a net angular momentum..."
It is too early for him to have incorporated the details of the galaxy asymmetry into his work explicitly, but he sees a suggestive thread: an initially spinning universe brought on a parity-violating asymmetry in gravity that allowed matter to triumph over its antimatter rival. And that process left two marks behind: the axis of evil in the cosmic background radiation, and the inconspicuous alignment of galaxies that Longo has spotted.

Gravitational Waves Can Explain Dark Energy And Axis of Evil, Says Cosmologist - Technology Review

Gravitational Waves Can Explain Dark Energy And Axis of Evil, Says Cosmologist - Technology Review: Until now, cosmologists have considered only waves with relatively short wavelengths. But Schluessel's idea is to imagine what the universe would look like if it contained much bigger waves with a wavelength of the order of the curvature of the cosmos itself, that's some 10^10 light years. These would be waves left over from the big bang that continue to resonate slowly on a vast scale

Here's the thing. Schluessel says these waves would distort the microwave back ground radiation in way that matches the preferred directions cosmologists see today. What's more, it would also distort the light from distant objects in way that would make them look as if they were accelerating away.

Cosmology's not broken, so why try to fix it? - opinion - 10 August 2010 - New Scientist

Cosmology's not broken, so why try to fix it?: "Luckily there is an alternative approach which eradicates the problem: Bayesian statistics. This takes into account both information from the experiment and, crucially, any relevant real-world information. If the aliens had applied Bayes's theorem, they would have reached the correct answer: there is a 100 per cent probability that the organism is human, because no other Earth creatures are capable of piloting planes. That piece of information is vital, but is totally ignored by the frequentist analysis.

In a recent paper, we have argued that ruling out the entire cosmological model on the basis of a 0.05 per cent probability is similarly ill-advised (Physical Review D, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.103008). In cosmology and elsewhere, Bayes tells us it is justifiable to be conservative in the face of statistical anomalies."