On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Michal Frackowiak wrote:
about my scepticism - I 100% agree with your comment in the newspaper.
In reality it's *our* comment, more or less including the comments from everyone of us who responded quickly enough for Łukasz's deadline...
The bit which Łukasz printed was the bit that i contributed the least to :).
Just compare all the texts (all online) if you don't believe me.
it is not enough for the theory to be consistent.
my scepticism is more about the data, not the idea itself - it would be great to verify it! but it is amazing how people (theoretists) react to even small inconsistencies within the model/data.... and I suppose this quadrupole level is a fake alert although it can wake up some brilient theoretical ideas.
The theoretical ideas (whether or not brilliant :) had *already* woken up since 10 years ago (in my case since 1994 - my paper published 1996 started from thinking in 1994).
i would say it's amazing how people have *ignored* topology for so long, despite it's obvious fundamental importance.
IMHO, the media fuss following Max Tegmark's NYT article many months ago and now the Luminet et al Nature article are simply bringing the balance of attention back to a fairer comparison of the different FLRW models (flat with trivial topology vs flat/spherical with non-trivial topology). i agree that the problem in the data is not highly significant, but it does happen to match a generic prediction that has been made by people working in cosmic topology.
anyway, back to work... b
regards - michal
Boud Roukema wrote:
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Michal Frackowiak wrote:
Marcin Gawronski wrote:
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Boud Roukema wrote:
hi everyone, i definitely think we should respond to this - but i would prefer it to be a collective response - there's no reason why only my name should be cited - e.g., we could at least have the official "team"
...
I am SURE the data is not convincing. but people get excited even if there is only 1 sigma difference between theory and observations. theoretists have very little to do since everything matches perfectly and even 1 sigma is an event... in case of cmb and low multipoles - with a slightly different analysis it does not give such exciting results ;-)
regards - michal forgive me but I am quite sceptic about this all.
i didn't put the following in the text since it's too subtle for a general audience (requires explaining what spherical harmonics are etc), but Efstathiou's increased quadrupole value provides a better match to the Luminet et al quadrupole. :) Of course, the octupole increases above the Luminet et al value. :(
In any case, (1) our journalist contact has already had the article printed
pA11 Rzeczpospolita 15.10.2003 http://www.rzeczpospolita.pl/gazeta/wydanie_031015/nauka/nauka_a_1.html
and (2) he didn't include all our names and (3) he misspelt my first name.
However, given that he works for a "controlled" newspaper, what he finally printed is probably not too bad in terms of - except that the credit for our collective opinion all goes to me - how's that for an example of intellectual capitalism...
As for the real science, i've been in cosmology long enough to remember how many, many times cosmologists wrote similar words to "forgive me but I am quite sceptic about this all" about a non-zero cosmological constant. Until the years 1997-2000 when those people shrunk to a tiny minority (including at least one highly respected cosmologist).
Only when the results are really solid will we know one way or the other whether cosmic topology is still a useful subject...
boud
### Baud Roukema z Centrum Astronomicznego Uniwersytetu Miko?aja Kopernika
Hipoteza Jeffreya Weeksa i Jeana-Pierre'a Lumineta jest bardzo interesuj?ca. Przyjmuj? oni za model wszech?wiata przestrze? dodekahedraln? Poincarego. Niestety, nie mamy jeszcze do?? danych, by stwierdzi?, czy hipoteza jest prawdziwa. To, ?e jest sp?jna, to za ma?o. Mo?na poda? przyk?ad innej idei, przedstawionej np. w pracy George'a Efstathiou (http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310207), wed?ug kt?rej wszech?wiat jest du?o, du?o wi?kszy i niezakrzywiony. Ta hipoteza jest tak samo sp?jna jak przestrzeni dodekahedralnej Poincarego.
W Centrum Astronomicznym Uniwersytetu Miko?aja Kopernika przeprowadzimy analiz? hipotezy, korzystaj?c z tych samych danych. Wykorzystamy te? katalogi galaktyk radiowych i kwazar?w. B?dziemy bardzo zadowoleni, je?li hipoteza oka?e si? prawdziwa. Na razie sprawa jest otwarta. NOT. ?.K. ###
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