The universe may be screwed up
September 10th, 2007 by waltLongo has analyzed a sample of 200,000 of elliptical galaxies with redshifts Z < 0.2 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. They look round when their spin axes are pointing directly towards us, and like more or less eccentric ellipses otherwise. So, by correlating their observed shapes with their positions in the sky, one can see if their axes tend to point the same way.The author claims that yes, there’s a statistically significant tendency for them to point towards the direction with right ascension α=202 ∘ and declination δ=25 ∘. In fact, he claims the effect is very strong. Interestingly, the quadrupole and octopole moments of the cosmic microwave background radiation (or CMB) seem to pick out roughly similar directions as being important.
September 13th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Appears to have been a false alarm.
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(Submitted on 29 Aug 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Sep 2007 (this version, v2))
Abstract: This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to the discovery of a serious bias resulting from the systematic dimming of galaxies with larger ellipticities away from the North Galactic Pole. Thus the conclusion that there is a special axis along which the elliptical galaxies tend to be aligned is incorrect.