Adopey.139
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utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!dopey.smb
Tue Mar 9 18:40:25 1982
Anisotropy in Big Bang radiation
The anisotropy in the 3-degree Kelvin background radiation is real,
though of course the interpretation is open to question. A good
explanation is in the July 16, 1977 issue of Science News; it reports
on work by George Smoot, M. V. Gorenstein, and Richard A. Muller of the
Lawrence Berkeley Lab (The work was presented at the American Physical
Society Meeting and a meeting of the American Astronomical Society -- no
dates given.) Basically, they mounted two directional antennas in a U-2
and flew it back and forth, switching things around to cancel out
equipment errors. The net result is a movement of about 390+/-60 km/sec
toward a point in the sky located at about 11 hours right ascension and
+6 degress declination -- in Saggitarius, if I recall correctly other
stories on the same experiment.
The observation has been confirmed by other experimenters; I can supply
further pointers to Science News stories upon request. One especially
interesting one is in the January 26, 1980 issue; it describes a
"quadrapole anisotropy" in the background radiation. The dipole
anisotropy measured by Smoot et al. can be explained as motion; a
quadrapole anisotropy must have to do with the structure of the universe
itself.
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