Re-evaluating evidence for Hawking points in the CMB

2019/09/30 by Dylan L. Jow, Douglas Scott · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Differential Geometry Research #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph.CO

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2020/03/021

arxiv created 2020/01/21 · openalex publication_date 2020/03/09 · arxiv updated 2020/03/18 · openalex created_date 2020/03/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We investigate recent claims for a detection of "Hawking points" (positions on the sky with unusually large temperature gradients between rings) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps at the 99.98% confidence level. We find that, after marginalization over the size of the rings, an excess is detected in Planck satellite maps at only an 87% confidence level (i.e., little more than 1σ). Therefore, we conclude that there is no statistically significant evidence for the presence of Hawking points in the CMB.

Citations

• Searching for concentric low variance circles in the cosmic microwave background
• On CCC-predicted concentric low-variance circles in the CMB sky
• No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky
• Planck2013 results. XXIII. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB
• ARE THERE ECHOES FROM THE PRE-BIG-BANG UNIVERSE? A SEARCH FOR LOW-VARIANCE CIRCLES IN THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND SKY

Cited by

• Conformal cyclic cosmology [wikipedia]

Related

• Apparent evidence for Hawking points in the CMB Sky
• The quest for CMB signatures of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
• Nearly full-sky low-multipole CMB temperature anisotropy: III. CMB anomalies
• The low level of correlation observed in the CMB sky at large angular scales and the low quadrupole variance
• No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky