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Large scale smoothness of the cosmic microwave background - evidence against the General Relativistic linkage between gravity and global space curvature
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Lieu, Richard Mittaz, Jonathan P. D. |
| Copyright Year | 2003 |
| Abstract | We examined the phase evolution of light as it passes through a Universe containing many massive bodies. According to General Relativity, these masses can influence the light beam from a remote distance by their gravitational fields, resulting in a gradual systematic change of the beam direction-the curvature of space. We show that if the effect is present, any random speed v in the masses (taken for simplicity to be a constant) will cause the frequency ω o of the arriving light to deviate slightly from its usual redshifted value. The situation is analogous to an elastic collision process. If the scatterers are still, they do not alter the frequency of an emerging photon. If v > 0, however, there will be a net shift given by δω o /ω o ∝ v/c. In the case of gravitational interactions, this shift is also proportional to the total density of the various mass concentrations (such as galaxies and clusters), which we assume to be 30 % of the critical density. The actual magnitude and sign of δω o is fixed along a particular light path (because the phase space distribution of the masses varies only over cosmic time scales), but can differ between two widely separated light paths that sample independent mass distributions. Since the first epoch of star formation was at z ≈ 6 (before which the Universe was probably too smooth to affect the light frequency in the manner described), and the random motion of galaxies typically involves v ≈ 300 km s −1 , a conservative estimate of the effect yields δω o /ω o ≈ 10 −4. When this prediction is compared with the cosmic microwave background data, a wide discrepancy is found, as the data indicate that the degree of large scale temperature anisotropy is much less than the predicted level. We are therefore led to the conclusion that the global propagation of light is not governed by the General Relativity theory in its present form. – 2 – |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0308305v5.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
