New subject: Matched circles

4 Mar 2008


      Hi Paul,
SERIOUS COMMENTS:
(1) "Six pairs of matched annuli crystalised out of the microwave hiss
     - their orientation on the sky corresponding to the 12 faces of a
     dodecahedron."
It certainly sounds nice and reads well. :)) However...
The first sentence here is misleading: we searched for the best 
orientation of a PDS model, while this sentence suggests that the
dodecahedral configuration was a *result* rather than an *assumption* of
our method. i would suggest something like:
"Their search method for the best orientation on the sky for the 12
    faces of a dodecahedron homed in onto one particular,
    self-consistent set of directions."
i haven't tried to put any "spice" back into the sentence - that's
your (difficult!) task of trying to do it while retaining scientific
accuracy.
(2) "Roukema's team admit..."
We quite overtly (including in the abstract) state the chance of our
twist angle occurring by chance in a non-PDS model and the method by
which we calculate it.  So it's not an admission - it's part of our
research results.
How about "Roukema's team themselves stated/said that..." ?
[The New Scientist also used the word "admit" - that's their
inaccuracy, not ours.]
(3) "a team ... claimed to have found 12 matched circles in the CMB"
This is misleading.
The paragraph i gave you previously was:
http://cosmo.torun.pl/pipermail/cosmo-media/2008-February/000073.html
...
In our new paper we use a different (though related) method, which we
think is more robust than the matched circles method - in some sense
you could say that it uses thickened matched circles, i.e. annuli,
even though this is an *interpretation* of the method, not the
calculation method itself. Since we did find a best solution, and that
solution has the correct twist angle within the uncertainty estimate,
and since the cross-correlations for that solution are strong, you
could loosely say that yes, there really are matched annuli in the
WMAP data.
This is not the same thing as "claimed to have found 12 matched
circles in the CMB".
If you want to be accurate, i suggest something like:
"a team ... claimed to have found what could be loosely said to be
12 thickened matched circles"
i don't think readers need to have the existence of subtlety hidden
from them - we can avoid giving them the details, but we can't 
pretend that something is very simple if it's not so simple.
(4) "team find new evidence that the fundamental shape of the universe
     is a dodecahedron"
Wrong. You could put:
"team find new evidence that the fundamental domain of the universe
     is a dodecahedron" 
or
"team find new evidence that the shape of the universe
     is a Poincare dodecahedral space"
or
"team find new evidence that the shape of the universe
     is a dodecahedron that wraps around on itself"
(5) Regarding the "map with matched circles"
Since our method was not to search for matched circles, we don't have
a map ready with matched circles shown on it. Of course, what we did
is *related* to matched circles, but the relation is not one-to-one.
What i suggest instead is the "best orientation" all-sky map on this page:
http://cosmo.torun.pl/Cosmo/PressReleaseRBSG08
[ The image was created by me, at home, independently of the corresponding
figure in our Astronomy & Astrophysics article, so you shouldn't
have copyright problems. If formality is needed, then choose one
of the GPL/GFDL/CC-BY-SA licences - probably you would want CC-BY-SA:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ]
If you want to use this, then a replacement for the text:
"team ... claimed to have found 12 matched circles in the CMB - shown here -
corresponding to dodecahedral topology."
could be something like:
"team ... claimed to have found that the best orientation of a
dodecahedron in the sky - shown here - gives the required twist
surprisingly well."
OTHER COMMENTS:
(*)  "Torun Centre for Astronomy in Poland"
It would be nice to put the university name as well, in at least one
of the three places:
"Torun Centre for Astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland"
MINOR COMMENTS:
(*) "their theory says the topology of space amounts to"
This is a matter of taste whether to use the popular usage of "theory"
to mean "hypothesis", or rather scientists' use of the word, which 
is quite different. Is gravity a theory? Yes, it's a theory. It's a
very well established theory. Try to ignore it and you'll soon end up in
hospital or worse. It's much more than just a hypothesis.
i would put: "their evidence supports the hypothesis that the topology
of space may amount to"
(*) "would look like a cosmic hall of mirrors"
i would put:
"would look something like a cosmic hall of mirrors"
(*) "was pioneered astrophysicists"
missing "by"
cheers
boud

Re: [Cosmo-media] Matched circles