Possible evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity [1011.3706]

Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) posits the existence of a cyclic history for our Universe.
Clusters and massive black holes from the previous aeon encounter, collapse, and the corresponding gravitational energy released is translated in our current aeon into a scalar field, an initial form of dark matter.




[...] The effect of such an energy burst would be to provide an outward kick to this initial material of the early universe. The kick will be much more energetic than the normal local variations in temperature in the early Big Bang. Accordingly, the outward (almost impulsive) burst would have, proportionally, a rather closely uniform intensity over the whole outward-moving sphere, in this material. This sphere is seen as a circle from our present vantage point, as it intersects our past light cone (where account might need to be taken of a certain amount of distortion of this circle due to inhomegeneities in the mass distribution in either aeon). The energy variations over the sphere would be of the order of the general temperature variations that we see in the CMB, at the last scattering surface, but this now sits on the edge of the far larger energy pulse. We do not see this energy pulse directly (although in principle we could, if it headed directly towards us, which could be the case only for a perceived circle of zero radius). What we see would be the scattered radiation as the pulse encounters further material in the early universe. The effect may be compared with what happens when a supernova burst encounters a cloud of gas [...]

Therefore, Gurzadyan and Penrose analyzed the 7-years WMAP and Boomerang-98 data and looked for concentric circles (and their corresponding centers) of lower (or higher) temperature variance.
They gridded the maps with 10885 points (away from the galactic plane) which could be candidates for being centers of concentric circles. They computed the variance for several circles around those points and they found that some of them were actually centers of circles of abnormally temperature variance values.

[...] Those points in the CMB sky which are centers of circles whose depth (the amount by which its temperature variance is lower than the mean) is at least 15 microK are noted, these deviating greatly from the Gaussian expectation with a significance of up to 6σ, i.e. probability 10^(-7). [...] It is found, very remarkably, that all low-depth circles are also centers of other such circles. We note that points which are simultaneously centers of n circles of around that depth would occur, with Gaussian data, only with the far smaller probability of ~ 10^(-7n) [...]

At the end of the paper, the authors, on the grounds of geometrical considerations, claim that such structures in the CMB maps cannot be created in an inflationary scenario…

Go CMB analysists ! Let's investigate !