Are the anomalies seen in the CMBR themselves an anomaly?

A science team is suggesting that the hot and cold spots that we see in
the CMBR are not real, they are an artifact of our software removing the
Milky Way's shadow from the pictures. Basically a Photoshopping error.

Yousuf Khan

Cosmic Radiation: the Dawn of New Physics or Statistical Slip-Up?
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/8572...tical-slip-up/

In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
A science team is suggesting that the hot and cold spots that we see in
the CMBR are not real, they are an artifact of our software removing the
Milky Way's shadow from the pictures. Basically a Photoshopping error.

Yousuf Khan

Cosmic Radiation: the Dawn of New Physics or Statistical Slip-Up?
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/8572...tical-slip-up/

The above link is sensationalized but basically accurate. The words
above the link are misleading. The actual article is at
http://iopscience.iop.org/1475-7516/2014/08/006/

What the abstract says is that those hot and cold spots that seem to
disagree with standard LCDM -- the ones on large angular scales --
are unreliable. In other words, the CMB shows no reliable indication
of any anomaly or "new physics." The hot and cold spots on small
angular scales are real and agree with LCDM.

Use of "Photoshopping" to describe foreground removal is especially
egregious. To me the term implies human esthetic judgment, but in
fact foreground removal is based on data and physical arguments. It
can still be imperfect, of course, as the article addresses, but it's
not made up out of nothing.

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Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Steve Willner wrote:
In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
A science team is suggesting that the hot and cold spots that we see in
the CMBR are not real, they are an artifact of our software removing the
Milky Way's shadow from the pictures. Basically a Photoshopping error.


What the abstract says is that those hot and cold spots that seem to
disagree with standard LCDM -- the ones on large angular scales --
are unreliable. In other words, the CMB shows no reliable indication
of any anomaly or "new physics." The hot and cold spots on small
angular scales are real and agree with LCDM.

Use of "Photoshopping" to describe foreground removal is especially
egregious. To me the term implies human esthetic judgment, but in
fact foreground removal is based on data and physical arguments. It
can still be imperfect, of course, as the article addresses, but it's
not made up out of nothing.

Here is a link to the arxiv.org paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1844v2.pdf

Best, Dan.

On 21/08/2014 4:48 PM, Steve Willner wrote:
Use of "Photoshopping" to describe foreground removal is especially
egregious. To me the term implies human esthetic judgment, but in
fact foreground removal is based on data and physical arguments. It
can still be imperfect, of course, as the article addresses, but it's
not made up out of nothing.

Not in the least, in my mind Photoshopping is one of the most automated
processes available when fixing photos, for example it can automatically
detect borders and stuff. Obviously they aren't really using the actual
Photoshop software, but I'm using the colloquial term here.

Yousuf Khan

On 8/21/14, 3:48 PM, Steve Willner wrote:

What the abstract says is that those hot and cold spots that seem to
disagree with standard LCDM -- the ones on large angular scales --
are unreliable. In other words, the CMB shows no reliable indication
of any anomaly or "new physics." The hot and cold spots on small
angular scales are real and agree with LCDM.


No anomaly within the measured Black Body Spectrum
but outside the measured Black Body Spectrum?

The CMB at 2.725K 160.6 GHz represents a Black Body
from zero to infinity GHz
Planck maps the sky in 30–857 GHz range
(a subset of the zero to infinity GHz range)
this is evident from the ARCADE data
http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.0569
that measures CMB at .02 - 100 GHz
and indicates an anomaly at .02-1 GHz
that has a WIMP dark matter interpretation.
But, other interpretations including a CMB background clumpy phase
are not ruled out.

WMAP observed CMB in 23 GHz to 94 GHz range
much different than Planck range
that in itself makes mapping WMAP to Planck CMB results problematic.