Everybody including SFT reported the initial results from the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) a few weeks ago. In a nutshell, the map from MAP shows where matter was slightly “clumpier” in some places more than others when the Big Bang went off to create the Universe. This uneven starting distribution caused clusters of galaxies in some places and nothingness in others. The MAP results also show that the majority of the universe isn’t even “normal” matter but instead mostly “dark matter” and “dark energy” whose properties we are only beginning to understand.
It gets weirder. Dr. Max Tegmark of the University of Pennsylvania, who specializes in “precision cosmology”, has replotted the MAP data as the surface of a sphere with as many sources of nearby data contamination such as dust clouds removed from the raw MAP data as possible. It’s the “cleanest” map of MAP yet – and it shows something previously unseen and absolutely astounding. As quoted by BBC, Dr. Tegmark said, “We found something very bizarre; there is some extra, so far unexplained structure in the CMB. We had expected that the microwave background would be truly isotropic, with no preferred direction in space but that may not be the case.” Looking at the symmetry of the CMB – measures technically called its octopole and quadrupole components – the researchers uncovered a curious pattern. They had expected to see no pattern at all but what they saw was anything but random. “The octopole and quadrupole components are arranged in a straight line across the sky, along a kind of cosmic equator. That’s weird. It could be telling us something about the shape of space on the largest scales. We did not expect this and we cannot yet explain it.”
It may mean that the CMB is clumpier not just in some places more than others, but in some directions more than others as well. But why? Only time, and more experiments, will tell.
Update [2003-3-11 7:11:41 by rickyjames]: An excellent follow-up article on this topic has appeared in The New York Times.