# Does new Planck satellite data kill std inflation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 22, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588 "2013-03-22T00:32:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/1 "2013-03-22T00:32:14Z")
New [CMB data from Planck](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/21/european-space-agencys-planck-map_n_2922026.html) indicates significant anomalies that appear to be inconsistent with standard inflation theories. > [@](#): > > The [European Space Agency](http://www.esa.int/ESA) has revealed the most precise map of the ancient universe ever made. > > The 50-million pixels all-sky image of cosmic background radiation (CMB) made by the £515 million Planck satellite [has already led to new theories of the age, composition and future of the universe.](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe) > > The remarkable image was made by observing microwave radiation across the sky over 15 months, and stripping out dust emissions and radio frequencies from the Milky Way galaxy and more distant objects to leave just the afterglow of the Big Bang. > > The result is an extremely precise picture of the universe just 380,000 years after the big bang. > > The data suggests the universe is slightly older than previously thought - 13.81 billion years, 80 million years more than our previous best guess. That’s based on new observations of the Hubble constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding. The new estimate of 67.3 km/s/Mpc is slower than previously though. > > But the data could prove troubling for some scientists, as it includes “large scale anomalies” which point to a preferred direction of energy fluctuations in the universe - the so-called [‘Axis of Evil’.](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327245.900-13-more-things-the-axis-of-evil.html) > > Rather than a totally uniform universe on the large scale, predicted by simple models of expansion, the early universe appears to be asymmetrical. > > There is also a ‘cold spot’ which extends over much of the sky - which is again unexplained. ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/2 "2013-03-22T02:23:27Z")
I’m not reading that it’s causing problems with _inflation_, per se. More like the opposite. From [Ars Technica’s article](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/first-planck-results-the-universe-is-still-weird-and-interesting/): > [@](#): > > One final piece from the power spectrum, known as the spectral index, indicates how fluctuations depend on size. Models for inflation predict a number slightly smaller than 1 for the spectral index; Planck data shows a value of about 0.96, with errors small enough so they don’t overlap with 1. **While it’s too soon to say that this is a verification of inflation, it’s a strong hint in that direction**. > > The true tests of inflation—and of Planck’s full prowess—will be revealed with the release of the polarization data, currently slated for early 2014. The polarization of different regions of the CMB may record a direct indication of the Universe’s rapid expansion (called inflation) in its earliest moments. Planck’s supply of liquid helium will be exhausted shortly after that, bringing the scientific mission to an end. But the data it has and will provide will keep cosmologists busy for a while. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/3 "2013-03-22T03:43:27Z")
However the axis of evil itself is bizarre. You have light that becomes specially polarized in it’s vicinity and even the axes of galaxies that line up with it. ---
**Author:** ![cantara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6f9a4e/32.png) [@cantara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cantara)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/4 "2013-03-22T20:38:17Z")
I perused the links. Is there an expectation that the universe is more homogeneous? Is the suspicion that the singularity at the big bang was homogeneous? Looks like the cold spot is where God was standing when the universe went bang. The scientists need to become cosmic spatter experts. Also, what a relief…only 95.1% of the universe is mysterious matter/energy and not 95.5%! ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/5 "2013-03-22T21:29:13Z")
Std inflation predicts a more homogeneous universe than what we are seeing from the latest data although Zen seems to be saying that we are still within a certain margin of error. However I think the axis of evil phenomenon negates that. The asymmetry associated with that is not only real but gives rises to a couple of very odd and dramatic phenomena of its own, such as causing the axes of over 1600 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky survey to line up with it - something the probability of which has been calculated as being well below 1% ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/6 "2013-03-23T00:40:23Z")
No, you need the Planck ointment for that. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/7 "2013-03-23T01:40:56Z")
[Here](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/06/08/the-lopsided-universe/) (from 2008) is a possible explanation for the axis of evil asymmetry that implies a pan-universal scalar field that pre-dates the big bang (at least that’s the best I can make of it - still waiting for our cosmologists to join in). > [@](#): > > But we didn’t give up! It turns out that you can make things work if you have _two_ scalar fields — one that does the inflating, cleverly called the “inflaton,” and the other which is responsible for the density perturbations, which should obviously be called the “perturbon” but for historical reasons is actually called the “[curvaton](http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0208055).” By decoupling the source of most of the density in the universe from the source of its perturbations, we have enough wiggle room to make a model that fits the data. But there’s not that much wiggle room, to be honest; we have an allowed region in parameter space that is not too big. That’s good news, as it brings the hope that we can make relatively precise predictions that could be tested by some means other than the CMB. > > One interesting feature of this model is that the purported supermode must have originated _before_ the period of inflation that gave rise to the smaller-scale perturbations that we see directly in the CMB. Either it came from earlier inflation, or something entirely pre-inflationary. > > So, to make a bit of a segue here, this Wednesday I gave a plenary talk at the summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis. I most discussed [the origin of the universe and the arrow of time](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/06/11/latest-declamations-about-the-arrow-of-time/) — I wanted to impress upon people that the origin of the entropy gradient in our everyday environment could be [traced back to the Big Bang](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/12/03/arrow-of-time-faq/), and that conventional ideas about inflation did not provide straightforward answers to the problem, and that the Big Bang [may not have been the beginning of the universe](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/04/27/how-did-the-universe-start/). I was more interested in stressing that this was a problem we should all be thinking about than pushing any of my favorite answers, but I did mention my [paper with Jennie Chen](http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/2004/10/arrow-of-time.html) as an example of the kind of thing we should all be looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/8 "2013-03-24T00:30:20Z")
To expand on **ZenBeam** ’s post, the new data indeed firm up the inflationary picture compared the what was known before. The scale parameter (which comes from a somewhat arbitrary parametrization but nonetheless provides a convenient, predictable quantity) sets the amount of subtle variation present in the CMB power spectrum across wavenumber. The new measurement is _n[sub]s[/sub]_ = 0.9603 +/- 0.0073, a greater than 5-sigma difference from perfect scale invariance and right in the wheelhouse of the most straightforward inflationary models, which predict a value of _n[sub]s[/sub]_ in the 0.93 to 0.98 range. There are statements out there that say things like “The new Planck data severely constrain the range of possible inflationary models.” In case this might get misinterpreted: this is a positive, not negative, statement for inflation. The new data puts excellent new constraints on the sorts of inflation models that are allowed, but the ones that remain allowed are well-matched to the data. The “Axis of Evil” is a thorn in the side of cosmology, and it’s done its job to generate scores of theoretical papers (like the one **deltasigma** noted). However, Planck didn’t add much new information here. The anomalies are at low multipoles, which means they appear on the sky at large angular scales. Planck’s additional power over earlier CMB measurements, though, is at high multipoles. This is natural since any anomaly that appears as a feature across the full sky will be noticed even by an instrument with poor angular resolution. Unfortunately we’ll never get more statistical precision on these low-_l_ anomalies since we have only one sky to observe. (In the jargon, this is known as “cosmic variance”, and these low-_l_ measurements are limited entirely by cosmic variance at this point.) Thus, the anomalies are still a “problem”(\*), but not any more of a problem then they were before. (\*) Of course, one person’s problem is another person’s journal article, etc. There are some subtleties in the statistical analysis of the axis of evil that make the level of significance difficult to pin down, and it’s at the annoying 2- to 3-sigma level where things tend to pop up and then go away. Only this time, due to cosmic variance, it’s can’t go away with more data even if it’s fundamentally a statistical fluctuation. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/9 "2013-03-25T09:13:48Z")
I’m not an expert, but George Efstathiou, who presented the Planck data in Paris, is quoted [here](http://www.wissenschaft.de/wissenschaft/news/316949.html) (German article) in reference to the measurement of the scale parameter, saying (my translation): [QUOTE=Efstathiou] If I were an inflationary cosmologist, I would be extremely happy. [/QUOTE] So it seems that the general opinion is that the Planck data reinforce inflation rather than refute it. ETA: [Here’s](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/03/planck-cosmology-mission) also an English source for the quote. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/10 "2013-03-25T10:37:08Z")
I was really hoping to hear about satellite based lasers shooting the herpes off of people’s faces. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/11 "2013-03-25T22:23:29Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > I was really hoping to hear about satellite based lasers shooting the herpes off of people’s faces. \ ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-new-planck-satellite-data-kill-std-inflation/653588/12 "2013-03-25T22:31:57Z")
I wasn’t going to do this since it seemed like more effort than it was worth and no one seems to actually read anything I post anyway, but . . . what the fuck. I put ‘std’ in the title for a reason. That reason, as explained in the next to the last line of the OP quote and as is more poignantly highlighted if you go to the ‘axis’ link, is that the simplest inflation theories imply uniformity in the CMB - for anyone who was texting during astrophysics, that means no significant anomalies. So I was never implying inflation as an idea is dead, just the simplest but also most elegant version of it. edit: Oh, and the reason this wasn’t previously a big deal despite being known from the WMAP data, is because it wasn’t clear that the data there was completely unambiguous. This data is.