From Craig Copi, Dragan Huterer and Glenn Starkman, Case Western Reserve University, and Dominik Schwarz, CERN
Your article “Universe map runs into local difficulty” did a good job communicating the nature of our analysis of the “oldest light in the universe”, measured using WMAP, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (11 December 2004, p 10). We would, however, like to offer an important clarification: we do not believe that our results “throw into question the data’s relevance and accuracy”. We take WMAP’s data seriously, and question neither its accuracy nor its relevance. Many results derived from the data appear to us to be very robust.
The article goes on to say that we are “casting doubt on the interpretation of the data and, in turn, on some of the models that spring from it”. We do believe our work and that of others casts doubt on cosmological events as the cause of the largest-scale fluctuations in the WMAP data. We also think it suggests that either some subtle contamination has crept into the data or the WMAP analysis or, more likely, that the largest-scale fluctuations are caused by some physical effect associated with the solar system or its immediate neighbourhood. However, we agree with the common interpretation of the WMAP data at smaller scales.
Cleveland, Ohio, US, and Geneva, Switzerland
