I wonder about the statistical fitness, though. The evidence appears to suffer from two problems: multiple tests and difficulty of assessing counterfactuals.
The whole proof that we should expect “more average” rings in the paper was quite handwavey, and there are some associated flaws. If we discovered rings of hotter material, would that also be evidence? If they did search for other structures, we should discount for multiple tests.
The real statistics problem is how unlikely this actually is if the universe is inflationary. They quote “6 s.d.,” but that was arrived at fairly unsatisfactorily—the model they compare to is not an actual inflationary model, which is what they should be comparing again. Perhaps they could try finding low-variance squares or triangles in the data :D
A more specific, sciencey problem is that for the smaller low-variance circles you’d expect it to be really easy to spot a temperature deviation as he predicts. Yet in the one example he shows, it looks normal. Also, depending on the specifics of this cosmology he’s supporting, energy bursts with times of origin after the big bang may be a problem.
Interesting.
I wonder about the statistical fitness, though. The evidence appears to suffer from two problems: multiple tests and difficulty of assessing counterfactuals.
The whole proof that we should expect “more average” rings in the paper was quite handwavey, and there are some associated flaws. If we discovered rings of hotter material, would that also be evidence? If they did search for other structures, we should discount for multiple tests.
The real statistics problem is how unlikely this actually is if the universe is inflationary. They quote “6 s.d.,” but that was arrived at fairly unsatisfactorily—the model they compare to is not an actual inflationary model, which is what they should be comparing again. Perhaps they could try finding low-variance squares or triangles in the data :D
A more specific, sciencey problem is that for the smaller low-variance circles you’d expect it to be really easy to spot a temperature deviation as he predicts. Yet in the one example he shows, it looks normal. Also, depending on the specifics of this cosmology he’s supporting, energy bursts with times of origin after the big bang may be a problem.