09-02-2006, 11:30 AM
Posted on Friday, 1 September, 2006 | 16:46 |
The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies. "These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial. "If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not." Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background.
Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background. If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background. These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky. "Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.
View: Full Article | Source: Physorg.com
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/vie...p?id=77586
The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies. "These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial. "If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not." Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background.
Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background. If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background. These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky. "Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.
View: Full Article | Source: Physorg.com
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/vie...p?id=77586