2001/01/31 by Louise M. Griffiths, Louise M Griffiths, Alessandro Melchiorri +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/320498
published as Astrophys.J.553:L5-L10,2001 · 5 pages LaTeX file, with 3 figures incorporated (uses emulateapj.sty and epsf). ApJ Letters accepted version
arxiv created 2001/03/30 · openalex publication_date 2001/05/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In recent years, upper limits on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, combined with predictions made by theories of galaxy formation, have been extremely powerful in ruling out purely baryonic dark matter (BDM) universes. However, it has recently been argued that the absence of a prominent second peak in the anisotropy spectrum measured by the BOOMERanG-98 and MAXIMA-1 experiments seems to favor a ΛBDM model when combined with standard big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints. In this Letter, we further investigate this result, showing that by using the CMB data alone , a purely baryonic adiabatic model of structure formation seems unlikely if the universe is flat (Ω = 1). Combining the CMB data with Type Ia supernova data renders purely baryonic models inconsistent with flatness at high significance and more than 3 σ away from both the BBN constraints and the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project result of h = 0.72 ± 0.08. These results indicate that only a radical revision of cosmology with ad hoc properties could bring baryonic models such as those advocated by modified Newtonian dynamics enthusiasts back into agreement with current observations.