Extending recent studies on the radio sky dipole, this one reports the preferred direction to be detected at 8 sigma in flux-density measurements.
Excerpt:
"There now exist many independent observations which indicate a preferred direction pointing roughly towards Virgo. It is unlikely that all of them can be explained by some systematic effect. For example, the NVSS data is more likely to pick a preferred axis pointing towards the poles due to systematic effect arising due to sources with low flux (Blake & Wall 2002). The direction observed, however, is nearly perpendicular to that. The dependence of direction with the cut on flux density might be explained by this systematic effect. This is consistent with our observation that the direction parameters are stable for the case of flux weighted (Kothari et al. 2013) and polarization flux weighted number counts. Furthermore it seems very unlikely that systematic effects would pick the same direction in so many different observations, i.e. radio polarizations orientations (Jain & Ralston 1999), optical polarizations (Hutsem ́ekers 1998), CMBR quadrupole and octopole (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 2004), radio number counts (Blake & Wall 2002; Singal 2011) and radio polarization flux (present work). In all likelihood this alignment of axes (Ralston & Jain 2004) is caused by a physical effect."
Excerpt:
"There now exist many independent observations which indicate a preferred direction pointing roughly towards Virgo. It is unlikely that all of them can be explained by some systematic effect. For example, the NVSS data is more likely to pick a preferred axis pointing towards the poles due to systematic effect arising due to sources with low flux (Blake & Wall 2002). The direction observed, however, is nearly perpendicular to that. The dependence of direction with the cut on flux density might be explained by this systematic effect. This is consistent with our observation that the direction parameters are stable for the case of flux weighted (Kothari et al. 2013) and polarization flux weighted number counts. Furthermore it seems very unlikely that systematic effects would pick the same direction in so many different observations, i.e. radio polarizations orientations (Jain & Ralston 1999), optical polarizations (Hutsem ́ekers 1998), CMBR quadrupole and octopole (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 2004), radio number counts (Blake & Wall 2002; Singal 2011) and radio polarization flux (present work). In all likelihood this alignment of axes (Ralston & Jain 2004) is caused by a physical effect."
The last sentence of the report reads: "A detailed investigation of the
ReplyDeletephysical mechanism is postponed to future work." Once the movie The Principle is released it will be magnificent to see how postponements such as the one mentioned become accelerated continuations! At the same time we can look forward to more and more scholarly studies getting super jump started and later "translated" for mainstream audiences all over the world.
It really is happening already, James. In addition to to recent papers concerning the radio sky dipole which I have been posting on this blog, just today a new preprint appeared involving an attempt to incorporate these observations into a "Lemaitre" universe- LeMaitre is a code word in these types of papers for "cosmology which violates the Copernican Principle and places Earth in a special, central position".
ReplyDeleteI call these LeMaitre-type cosmologies "weak geocentrism" ;-)
Here is the paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.3680.pdf
Excerpt:
"In conclusion, accepting that the dark flow is real and that it increases linearly with the distance, the tilted Lemaıtre model could be considered as a candidate to explain it. Then there exists a preferred radial spatial direction in the Universe, given by the matter dark flow. Is this “the axis of evil” or better “the rebel or guerrillero axis”, because it reappears when the dark flow is considered?"