Re:Soccer Ball Universe

Not so fast, there are other interpretations of the data. Here's one by Tegmark
et al. from the arXiv server.

The significance of the largest scale CMB fluctuations in WMAP
Ang�elica de Oliveira-Costa1, Max Tegmark1, Matias Zaldarriaga2 & Andrew
Hamilton3
1Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
19104, USA
angelica@higgs.hep.upenn.edu
2Dept. of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA and
3JILA & Dept. of Astrop. & Planetary Sciences, U. Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 ,
USA
(Dated: Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. July 15 2003, revised Oct. 9 2003 - still no
referee report.)
We investigate anomalies reported in the Cosmic Microwave Background maps from
the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite on very large angular scales and
discuss possible
interpretations. Three independent anomalies involve the quadrupole and
octopole: 1) The cosmic
quadrupole on its own is anomalous at the 1-in-20 level by being low (the
cut-sky quadrupole measured
by the WMAP team is more strikingly low, apparently due to a coincidence in the
orientation
of our Galaxy of no cosmological significance); 2) The cosmic octopole on its
own is anomalous at
the 1-in-20 level by being very planar; 3) The alignment between the quadrupole
and octopole is
anomalous at the 1-in-60 level. Although the a priori chance of all three
occurring is 1 in 24000, the
multitude of alternative anomalies one could have looked for dilutes the
significance of such a pos-
teriori statistics. The simplest small universe model where the universe has
toroidal topology with
one small dimension of order half the horizon scale, in the direction towards
Virgo, could explain
the three items above. However, we rule this model out using two topological
tests: the S-statistic
and the matched circle test. In particular, our results rule out the recently
proposed dodecahedron
model of Luminet, Weeks, Riazuelo, Lehoucq & Uzan