[HN Gopher] Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible C...
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       Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic
       Structures
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2023-03-14 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | dwaaash wrote:
       | see the turtle, ain't he keen?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dreen wrote:
       | Just yesterday I was reading about the Axis of Evil
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology), an
       | unexplained phenomenon observed in the CMB.
       | 
       | Basically we are observing more and more things out there which
       | seem to be aligned to the plane of our solar system. Very big
       | things, cosmologically speaking. It could just be a coincidence
       | coupled with our brains need to see patterns in chaos, or not...
        
         | standardly wrote:
         | The wiki states theres a correlation between our Solar System's
         | plane and the CMB but it doesn't really make clear what the
         | correlation is other than 'aligned'. What is aligned with what?
         | The CMB just looks like a web of entropic radiation, I don't
         | see any alignment. Going to look into this more because it
         | sounds cool
        
           | btouellette wrote:
           | https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0934
        
           | dreen wrote:
           | Maybe someone who actually knows stuff can provide a better
           | reply, I think its about alignment of structures we see in
           | the CMB.
        
             | ponchopunchy wrote:
             | I used to work on a research team that focuses on the
             | structure of the cosmic web (aka structure of dark matter).
             | We found that our solar system's axis of rotation aligns
             | with a local cosmic web "wall" that we are within. This
             | makes sense from a gravitational POV since the wall is made
             | of dark matter which has a gravitational pull.
             | 
             | From one of our papers:
             | 
             | "We also find that the local web environment around
             | galaxies of Milky Way's and Andromeda's masses that are
             | near the centre of a cosmic wall does not appear to have
             | any effect on the properties of those galaxies' dark matter
             | haloes except on their orientation, although we find that
             | it is rather rare to have such massive haloes near the
             | centre of a relatively small cosmic wall."
             | 
             | link to paper:
             | https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/483/2/2101/5203631
        
         | prox wrote:
         | "maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger
         | scales."
         | 
         | This is my go to layman (but informed) speculation right now.
         | As the gradient of scale moves in various directions the rules
         | of the game seem to bend.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-14 23:02 UTC)