Cluster Cosmology

h1. Paper pool 2

Interesting papers that are off-topic, controversial or for other reasons not suitable for journal club. We can still discuss them over coffee!

h2. Cosmology and clusters

h3. Excess ellipticity of hot and cold spots in the WMAP data?

Eirik Berntsen, Frode K. Hansen

(Submitted on 22 Nov 2012)

We investigate claims of excess ellipticity of hot and cold spots in the WMAP data (Gurzadyan et al. 2005, 2007). Using the cosmic microwave background data from 7 years of observations by the WMAP satellite, we find, contrary to previous claims of a 10 sigma detection of excess ellipticity in the 3-year data, that the ellipticity of hot and cold spots are perfectly consistent with simulated CMB maps based on the concordance cosmology. We further test for excess obliquity and excess skewness/kurtosis of ellipticity and obliquity and find the WMAP7 data consistent with Gaussian simulated maps.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5275

h2. General interest: Astrophysics

h2. General interest: Physics

h2. Other