Claim CE421:
Anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation measured by the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe show an axis. The big bang
proposes no special orientations, so an axis discredits the big bang
theory, but it is consistent with creationist cosmology.
Source:
Humphreys, Russell, 2003. Light from creation illuminates cosmic
axis. Acts and Facts 32(6) (Jun.): 4.
Response:
- Humphries referred to the work of Tegmark et al. (2003). Tegmark et
al.'s map shows an axis of symmetry for the quadrapole and octopole
maps, but the hexadecapole map shows no such axis of symmetry, which
could indicate that the axis is an artifact of a systematic bias in the
data analysis.
- A cosmic axis is compatible with the big bang. If Tegmark et al.'s
results are correct, they imply that cosmology is anisotropic (not the
same in all directions) on very large length scales. There has been,
to date, little evidence gathered about the universe on such scales,
but anisotropic cosmologies have been seriously considered. Goedel's
rotating universe (Goedel 1949) is one example. Another is a universe
with one spatial dimension compacted relative to the other two.
References:
- Goedel, Kurt, 1949. An example of a new type of cosmological solutions
of Einstein's field equations of gravitation. Reviews of Modern
Physics 21(3): 447-450.
- Tegmark, M., A. de Oliveira-Costa and A. J. S. Hamilton, 2003. A high
resolution foreground cleaned CMB map from WMAP.
Physical Review D 68: 123523,
http://cul.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0302496
created 2003-6-10, modified 2004-2-14
