[Cosmo-media] Matched circles

Tue Mar 4 11:12:35 CET 2008

Hi Boud - thanks for going through this in so much detail. All points taken
on board and text tweaked accordingly... For the map of the matched circles,
would you have anything like the attached available? Jean-Pierre Luminet
passed me this, from a recent press release of his. But I gather this is now
out of date. I liked the way this put the circles into the context of the
microwave maps that readers may have seen already. Do you have a current
version of such a figure at all?
All best
Paul

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> From: Boud Roukema <boud at astro.uni.torun.pl>
> Reply-To: PUBLICLY archived cosmology-media interface
> <cosmo-media at cosmo.torun.pl>
> Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 02:54:57 +0100 (CET)
> To: Paul Parsons <paulp01 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: Paul Parsons <paulparsons at bbcmagazinesbristol.com>, PUBLICLY archived
> cosmology-media interface <cosmo-media at cosmo.torun.pl>
> Subject: Re: Matched circles
> 
> Hi Paul,
> 
> SERIOUS COMMENTS:
> 
> (1) "Six pairs of matched annuli crystalised out of the microwave hiss
>      - their orientation on the sky corresponding to the 12 faces of a
>      dodecahedron."
> 
> It certainly sounds nice and reads well. :)) However...
> 
> The first sentence here is misleading: we searched for the best
> orientation of a PDS model, while this sentence suggests that the
> dodecahedral configuration was a *result* rather than an *assumption* of
> our method. i would suggest something like:
> 
>   "Their search method for the best orientation on the sky for the 12
>     faces of a dodecahedron homed in onto one particular,
>     self-consistent set of directions."
> 
> i haven't tried to put any "spice" back into the sentence - that's
> your (difficult!) task of trying to do it while retaining scientific
> accuracy.
> 
> 
> (2) "Roukema's team admit..."
> 
> We quite overtly (including in the abstract) state the chance of our
> twist angle occurring by chance in a non-PDS model and the method by
> which we calculate it.  So it's not an admission - it's part of our
> research results.
> 
> How about "Roukema's team themselves stated/said that..." ?
> 
> [The New Scientist also used the word "admit" - that's their
> inaccuracy, not ours.]
> 
> 
> (3) "a team ... claimed to have found 12 matched circles in the CMB"
> 
> This is misleading.
> 
> The paragraph i gave you previously was:
> http://cosmo.torun.pl/pipermail/cosmo-media/2008-February/000073.html
> 
>> In our new paper we use a different (though related) method, which we
>> think is more robust than the matched circles method - in some sense
>> you could say that it uses thickened matched circles, i.e. annuli,
>> even though this is an *interpretation* of the method, not the
>> calculation method itself. Since we did find a best solution, and that
>> solution has the correct twist angle within the uncertainty estimate,
>> and since the cross-correlations for that solution are strong, you
>> could loosely say that yes, there really are matched annuli in the
>> WMAP data.
> 
> This is not the same thing as "claimed to have found 12 matched
> circles in the CMB".
> 
> If you want to be accurate, i suggest something like:
> 
> "a team ... claimed to have found what could be loosely said to be
> 12 thickened matched circles"
> 
> i don't think readers need to have the existence of subtlety hidden
> from them - we can avoid giving them the details, but we can't
> pretend that something is very simple if it's not so simple.
> 
> 
> 
> (4) "team find new evidence that the fundamental shape of the universe
>      is a dodecahedron"
> 
> Wrong. You could put:
> 
>   "team find new evidence that the fundamental domain of the universe
>      is a dodecahedron"
> or
> 
>   "team find new evidence that the shape of the universe
>      is a Poincare dodecahedral space"
> 
> or
> 
>   "team find new evidence that the shape of the universe
>      is a dodecahedron that wraps around on itself"
> 
> 
> 
> (5) Regarding the "map with matched circles"
> 
> Since our method was not to search for matched circles, we don't have
> a map ready with matched circles shown on it. Of course, what we did
> is *related* to matched circles, but the relation is not one-to-one.
> 
> What i suggest instead is the "best orientation" all-sky map on this page:
> http://cosmo.torun.pl/Cosmo/PressReleaseRBSG08
> 
> [ The image was created by me, at home, independently of the corresponding
> figure in our Astronomy & Astrophysics article, so you shouldn't
> have copyright problems. If formality is needed, then choose one
> of the GPL/GFDL/CC-BY-SA licences - probably you would want CC-BY-SA:
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ]
> 
> If you want to use this, then a replacement for the text:
> 
> "team ... claimed to have found 12 matched circles in the CMB - shown here -
> corresponding to dodecahedral topology."
> 
> could be something like:
> 
> "team ... claimed to have found that the best orientation of a
> dodecahedron in the sky - shown here - gives the required twist
> surprisingly well."
> 
> 
> 
> OTHER COMMENTS:
> 
> (*)  "Torun Centre for Astronomy in Poland"
> 
> It would be nice to put the university name as well, in at least one
> of the three places:
> 
> "Torun Centre for Astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland"
> 
> 
> 
> MINOR COMMENTS:
> 
> 
> (*) "their theory says the topology of space amounts to"
> 
> This is a matter of taste whether to use the popular usage of "theory"
> to mean "hypothesis", or rather scientists' use of the word, which
> is quite different. Is gravity a theory? Yes, it's a theory. It's a
> very well established theory. Try to ignore it and you'll soon end up in
> hospital or worse. It's much more than just a hypothesis.
> 
> i would put: "their evidence supports the hypothesis that the topology
> of space may amount to"
> 
> 
> (*) "would look like a cosmic hall of mirrors"
> 
> i would put:
> "would look something like a cosmic hall of mirrors"
> 
> 
> (*) "was pioneered astrophysicists"
> 
> missing "by"
> 
> 
> cheers
> boud

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