EvC Forum: Cosmology Principle vs the actual center of the Universe

Is there any difference in evidence and observations that give the concept of the cosmology principle, which is the assumption that every place in the universe looks like it is the center of the universe, and us actually being the literal center?

I know that there are two principles that are predicted by the use of the assumptions of the Cosmology principle, but is there anything that falsifies the concept of us actually being the center of the universe?/

Replies to this message:
	Message 3 by AZPaul3, posted 05-27-2010 8:43 AM	ramoss has not yet responded
	Message 4 by hotjer, posted 05-27-2010 8:52 AM	ramoss has responded

ramoss

Member

Posts: 2508

Joined: 08-11-2004

Member Rating: 7.4

Normal Thread Display

Message 7 of 38 (564161)
06-08-2010 5:49 PM

Reply to: Message 4 by hotjer
05-27-2010 8:52 AM

Yet, I was wondering .. because according to Lawence Krauss, there is an orientation of things along the disc of the universe. In an interview he mentioned
http://www.edge.org/...ulture/krauss06/krauss06.2_index.html

Indeed, as the Times suggested, they validate the notions of inflation. But I think that's just journalists searching for a story. Because if you look at what quantitatively has come out of the new results they're exactly consistent with the old results. Which also validate inflation. They reduce the error bars a little bit, by a factor of two. I don't know if that is astounding. But what is intriguing to me is that while everything is consistent with the simplest models, there's one area where there's a puzzle. On the largest scales, when we look out at the universe, there doesn't seem to be enough structure — not as much as inflation would predict. Now the question is, is that a statistical fluke?
That is, we live in one universe, so we're a sample of one. With a sample of one, you have what is called a large sample variance. And maybe this just means we're lucky, that we just happen to live in a universe where the number's smaller than you'd predict. But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.

The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is imply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales. And of course as a theorist I'm certainly hoping it's the latter, because I want theory to be wrong, not right, because if it's wrong there's still work left for the rest of us.

Have they figured out what the results mean? Have they confirmed the data, or are the theories wrong?

Edited by ramoss, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
	Message 4 by hotjer, posted 05-27-2010 8:52 AM		hotjer has responded

Replies to this message:
	Message 8 by hotjer, posted 06-08-2010 7:49 PM	ramoss has not yet responded
	Message 11 by cavediver, posted 06-09-2010 1:19 PM	ramoss has not yet responded

Date format: mm-dd-yyyy

Timezone: ET (US)

Newer Topic | Older Topic