Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology

Aquí está el análisis de los nuevos datos del WMAP. No voy a ocultar que esperaba alguna sorpresa, sobre todo por los continuos aplazamientos de la publicación. Sin embargo, las conclusiones del papel hablan por sí solas; el modelo cosmológico estándar sale sólidamente reforzado.

The standard model of cosmology has survived another rigorous set of tests. The errors on the WMAP data at large ℓ are now three times smaller and there has been significant improvements in other cosmological measurements. Despite the overwhelming force of the data, the model continues to thrive.

The data are so constraining that there is little room for significant modifications of the basic Lambda-CDM model. The combination of WMAP measurements and other astronomical measurements place significant limits on the geometry of the universe, the nature of dark energy, and even neutrino properties...

...The WMAP data provides insights into all three of these fundamental problems:
- The clear detection of the predicted acoustic peak structure implies that the dark matter is non-baryonic.
- The WMAP data are consistent with nearly flat universe in which the dark energy has an equation of state close to that of a cosmological constant, w = −1. The combination of WMAP data with measurements of the Hubble Constant, baryon oscillations, supernova data and large-scale structure observations all reinforces the evidence for dark energy.
- The simplest model for structure formation, a scale-invariant spectrum of fluctuations, is not a good fit to the WMAP data. The WMAP data requires either tensor modes or a spectral index with ns < 1 to fit the angular power spectrum. These observations match the basic inflationary predictions...

¿Qué hay de los datos de la polarización? ¿Qué pasa con la reionización? ¿Qué pasa con los multipolos bajos y la varianza cósmica que se han interpretado a veces como indicio de una dirección preferida en el espacio?, etc. No he leído todavía el extenso papel, pero no sé por qué tengo la impresión de que van a quedar algunas cosas por responder. Veremos.