Adopey.139 net.space 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.