DEBUNKING PALM AND MACANDREW ON THE CMB EVIDENCE Part 1


The Planck mission has yielded the most detailed map 
yet of the cosmic microwave background radiation.


R. Sungenis: For those of you not familiar with Alec MacAndrew, he is more or less the scientific hatchet man for David Palm; and is being used by Palm to attempt to discredit geocentrism, as well as our movie, The Principle, a movie which reveals the demise of the Copernican Principle.
Palm has enlisted MacAndrew at his own risk, of course, since Palm does not know any of the science that MacAndrew asserts. As such, Palm doesn’t know whether what MacAndrew says is true or false, especially since Palm does not vet MacAndrew’s assertions against knowledgeable critics before he posts them.
I, for one, can easily show that MacAndrew’s arguments against geocentrism are quite specious. For starters, one can look at my latest critique of MacAndrew in which I point out that he attempts to win the debate against geocentrism by arguing the absurd position that Newton’s physics would not allow geocentrism but Mach’s and Einstein’s physics would allow it. See my article The “Physics” of Alec MacAndrew at


In short, modern science says that all three give the same results and only differ in the small details (e.g., the perihelion of Mercury). In fact, it can be shown that Einstein’s tensor equation G = 8Ļ€T is just a relativistic version of Newton’s F = ma and was actually derived from F = ma.
Speaking of “posting,” obsessed as David Palm is against our efforts to bring alternative cosmology to the discussion table, he chose the week of our theatrical debut of The Principle in Chicago to post his latest diatribe. This is typical of the tactics Palm has displayed in the past. His latest underhanded attempt was to make allegations that the world’s geocentric authors were “plagiarists.” Of course, as we always do, we expose the silly school yard arguments of Mr. Palm for what they really are, and, of course, Mr. Palm never admits that he is wrong. See our critique at:


Not only is David Palm ignorant of the important science issues, he specializes in telling half‐truths concerning the evidence. Exposing Mr. Palm’s lies is my job, of course, and below I will give you yet another example of how Palm and his cohort, MacAndrew, deceive the unknowing public. 

Palm: The new geocentrists have placed a huge amount of emphasis on data recently obtained by several space probes which measured the cosmic microwave background or CMB. Specifically, they claim that not only do these new discoveries spell the death knell for current “big bang” cosmology, but that various approximate alignments in the CMB somehow “point” directly at the Earth, making this a major plank in their case that the Earth is the motionless center of the whole universe.

Dr. Alec MacAndrew has recently completed an important new piece —The CMB and Geocentrism http://www.geocentrismdebunked.org/the‐cmb‐and‐geocentrism/ — which not only explains what the CMB is and how its existence was predicted by the same standard cosmological theory the geocentrists loath,

R. Sungenis: We see that Palm begins by brainwashing his readers. The Big Bang did not “predict” the CMB. If one looks at the original formulations for the expansion of the universe proposed by Edwin Hubble (an ad hoc expansion that Hubble devised in order to answer the redshift that put the Earth in the center of the universe), there was no prediction of a cosmic microwave radiation (CMB). In fact, as physicist Andre Assis shows us, the CMB fits better with a non‐expanding, non‐Big Bang, universe:

Usually it is claimed that the CBR is a proof of the big bang and of the expansion of the universe as it had been predicted by Gamow and collaborators....However, we performed a bibliographic search and found something quite different from this view....we have found several predictions or estimations of this temperature based on a stationary universe without expansion, always varying between 2 K and 6 K. Moreover, one of these estimates [C. E. Guillaume] was performed in 1896, prior to Gamow’s birth in 1904!....The conclusion is that the discovery of the CBR by Penzias and Wilson in 1965 is a decisive factor in favor of a universe in dynamical equilibrium without expansion, and against the big bang.1

The reality is that the CMB was shoe‐horned into the Big Bang theory by convenience. Grote Reber, in the early 1940s, was the first to discover the radiation, not Pensias and Wilson in 1963. Of course, the reason modern scientists don’t credit Reber with the discovery is that he was against the Big Bang until his death in 2002.2 Unlike Palm and MacAndrew who want to be part of the “boys club,” Reber knew the Big Bang was a farce and that the CMB proved nothing for it.


Palm: ...but also thoroughly rebuts these extravagant claims of the new geocentrists— while at the same time acknowledging that there are interesting anomalies in the CMB data that require further research and explanation.


R. Sungenis: It is now evident that David Palm has, indeed, become one of “the boys.” He is using the same politically correct language they do. The phrase “interesting anomalies” was recently used by the European Space Agency in March 2013 when they were confronted with the stark evidence from the Planck probe that verified, for the third time in 20 years, that the “Axis of Evil” exists. If you don’t know, the phrase “Axis of Evil” was coined in 2004 to answer the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data that showed the CMB was aligned with the Earth’s equator and the Sun‐ Earth ecliptic.

Palm: Dr. MacAndrew’s article is well worth reading in full, but below are my own “take away” points, followed by some salient quotes to whet your appetite for more. As we have encountered again and again, the new geocentrists cherry pick the scientific data for anything they perceive might bolster their case. In doing so, they regularly misconstrue and misrepresent the evidence, while never getting around to actually presenting a coherent model of their own, being content instead to merely throw stones at the hard work done by others. Their claims with regard to the CMB are smack in line with this pattern.

R. Sungenis: “Cherry pick the data”? What Mr. Palm means, of course, is that since many cosmologists today don’t like the evidence that puts Earth at or near the center, it is wrong for us to quote just the cosmologists who are brutally honest with the evidence and admit the CMB is aligned with the Earth. As for who, in fact, “misconstrues and misrepresents the evidence,” we shall see who best fits that category. I won’t mention names, but their initials are DP and AM.

Palm: Very far from demolishing the standard model as the new geocentrists contend, the vast bulk of the recent CMB data actually support the standard cosmological model in significant ways. This by itself does not “prove” the standard model to be true, but it highlights the propensity of the new geocentrists to exaggerate to the point of misrepresentation.

R. Sungenis: Let me give you an example of what Mr. Palm is trying to argue. Since the CMB is mostly isotropic and homogeneous (say, about 95%), if one were an advocate of the Big Bang, he might appear to have a sensible argument that the CMB “supports” the Big Bang since the Big Bang predicted an isotropic and homogeneous universe. But as they say, “the devil is in the details.” First, let’s see how George F. R. Ellis rebuts Mr. Palm’s argument (FYI, Dr. Ellis is in The Principle and is one of the leading physicists in the world today). He writes:

“Models of the sort described here [a geocentric model he proposed in the late 1970s] have not been considered previously because of the assumption – made at the very beginning in setting up the standard models – of a principle of uniformity [homogeneity]... This is assumed for a priori reasons and not tested by observations. However, it is precisely this principle that we wish to call into question. The static inhomogeneous model discussed in this paper shows that the usual unambiguous deduction that the universe is expanding is a consequence of an unverified assumption, namely, the uniformity [homogeneity] assumption. This assumption is made because it is believed to be unreasonable that we should be near the center of the Universe.”3

So who is “misconstruing and misrepresenting”? Obviously, it is David Palm. Ellis shows us that the very reason people like Palm and MacAndrew opt for the Big Bang and the homogeneous CMB is that they find it “unreasonable that we should be near the center of the Universe.” Of course, Palm and MacAndrew would never admit their bias, but thank God that George Ellis did.

By the way, Ellis is also the guy who admitted this in the 1995 October issue of Scientific American:



I can construct [for] you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations. You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.4



One equally famous astrophysicist today, Paul C. W. Davies, writes this concerning the redshift that Big Bang proponents often try to use to prove the Big Bang. And guess what? Davies admits that the alternative is a geocentric universe!





But redshifts can also arise from the gravitational attraction of mass. If the Earth were at the center of the universe, the attraction of the surrounding mass of stars would also produce redshifts wherever we looked! The argument advanced by George Ellis in this article is more complex than this, but his basic thrust is to put man back into a favored position in the cosmos. His new theory seems quite consistent with our astronomical observations, even though it clashes with the thought that we are godless and making it on our own.5



Is that “cherry‐picking,” Mr. Palm, or is that just a brute fact of science which exposes you and MacAndrew as prejudicial and biased commentators? The fact that neither Palm nor MacAndrew NEVER show any such opposition to their pet theory exposes them as the consummate “cherry‐pickers” who deceive the audience with lies and half‐ truths.
Second, to the delight of the Big Bangers, let’s, for the sake of argument, agree that the universe is 95% isotropic and homogeneous. What about that other 5%? How significant would that be in studies of this nature? Pretty big. Let’s see how. Claiming that the 95% homogeneous CMB supports the Big Bang is like saying that this cake of Jello is good to eat because it is 95% homogeneous. The only problem, of course, is that there are two swords running through the middle of the Jello, which make up the other 5%.


In Palm’s and MacAndrew’s preferred cosmology, they would tell you to put your face in the Jello and eat to your heart’s content, but forget to warn that you might get cut by the two swords going through the middle. Why? Because to Palm and MacAndrew the two swords (which represent the 5% of CMB aligned with the Earth’s equator and the Sun‐Earth ecliptic in our analogy) are just “interesting anomalies” and nothing to be worried about!

For all you ladies out there trying to pick a dress for your next night out, let’s say I offered you this dress:
In order to sell it to you, I would say, “This dress is 95% homogeneous polka dots. Isn’t it beautiful! And don’t worry about the 5% of the polka dots that are ten times bigger than the 95% of polka dots. It was just an ‘anomaly’ that occurred when we were making the dress, but everyone will love it!” Would you wear the dress? I don’t think so. Now, apply that logic to the sales job that Palm and MacAndrew are trying to foist on us and then you will understand how deceptive their argument is.

Palm: Although you would never know it by reading geocentrist literature, the alignments which the new geocentrists highlight in the CMB are far from exact – they are only approximate. It is true that any apparent alignments are interesting to physicists if they are expecting randomness. But the inexactness of the alignments certainly does not create anything like a sound foundation upon which to build the extravagant claims of the geocentrists. It is precarious, at best, to argue that the CMB data are actually “pointing to” the earth when those alignments are off by 7, 14, even 16 degrees according to the most recent, most precise measurements. The geocentrists are again playing fast and loose with the facts. They demand we accept that God intentionally made the earth motionless at the exact center of the universe. Yet, they’re content with supposed evidence that God is an extremely sloppy architect and cartographer who can’t manage to “point” to the earth with a margin of error of up to 16 degrees.

R. Sungenis: This is another of Mr. Palm’s specious arguments. His logic is like saying that God is a sloppy architect because he needs billions of sperm to attempt to get to the ovum so that just one can enter it to impregnate a woman. Why doesn’t God just make one strong sperm to make it all the way? Mr. Palm is apparently working under the fallacious premise that unless something is exact, it can’t be true.
Second, let’s take a look at the exact words of MacAndrew from which Palm extracts this “16 degrees” that he is using to discredit geocentrism. Here is MacAndrew’s paragraph from below. (I have bolded MacAndrew’s important comments):


Using the data from Table 18 of ref [29], which shows the direction in
galactic co‐ordinates of quadrupole and octopole as measured by Planck
for a number of different component separation schemes (which are
algorithms used to clean the CMB maps of foreground contamination,
which is microwave energy that arises from sources that are not part of
the CMB), I have calculated the measured angles between various
features. The angles between quadrupole, octopole, dipole, equinox and
ecliptic plane for the KQ corrected SMICA component separation scheme
are:

The quadrupole to the ecliptic plane is 16.0°



So the alignment of these CMB features with themselves, with the
kinematic dipole caused by the motion of the solar system, and with the
equinox, is far from exact and lies within a 30° cone. Nevertheless this
alignment of a number of nominally independent directions is
unexpected and the probability that all four align to this degree
randomly is only about 0.3%.



R. Sungenis: So what we find is that the “16 degrees” is not actually in the literature written by the authoritative experts in this field, but was Alec MacAndrew’s ipse dixit calculation, the very person who is trying to convince us the CMB alignments are inconsequential for geocentrism.



Notice also that MacAndrew still must admit that when one adds up all the alignments of the CMB with our Earth, the possibility that four independent directions could align, by mere chance, with the Earth and Sun, could only be about a 0.3%! Not too shabby for the geocentrists! According to the CMB, their geocentric universe is 99.7% true!



That this evidence doesn’t absolutely astound MacAndrew and Palm shows how blinded and obsessed they are. It shows that their fight against the geocentric implications of the CMB is more like a personal grudge, not a scientific quest. That they can look at the these astounding percentages and not be moved to the very core of their being shows what fools men really are. We can understand MacAndrew’s motivation, since he is an admitted atheist. But it is harder to understand David Palm’s motivation, since he claims to be a Catholic.



Third, let’s look a little closer at MacAndrew’s “16 degrees.” Even if it were true, would it upset the alignments of the CMB with the Earth‐Sun block of the universe? How could it, if at the end of all MacAndrew’s cosmological jousting he must admit that in the totality of the alignments with the Earth, even if off by 16 degrees, there is only a 0.3% chance of them being random?


Hence, if we calculate the slight off‐centered position of the Earth with the universe, we will see the slight off‐centered alignments of the CMB against the Earth. So, it is no surprise to the geocentrists that the alignments are not exact; rather; they are very close to the Earth’s equator and the Sun‐Earth ecliptic and is what we would expect in a Neo‐Tychonic universe.
Now, let’s say a little more about Mr. Palm’s accusation that God is a “sloppy architect” if God actually intended to align the universe with the Earth and Sun. In the geocentric universe, the Earth is not at the geometric center of the universe, but is off to one side by one astronomical unit, or 93 million miles. The universe is centered on the Sun, and thus the Sun would be closer to the geometric center of the universe, not the Earth. This is the very reason that the Bible never says that Earth is in the center of the universe, but only that it does not move. Why? Because the Earth is the center of mass for the universe, and the center of mass, as opposed to the geometric center, does not move. The entire universe follows the motion of the sun around the Earth because the center of mass for the universe coincides precisely with the center of mass of the Earth. In regards to the CMB, our model shows that the CMB alignments with equinoxes and ecliptic are the result of the annual Coriolis force created by daily rotation of the universe.


Palm: But it’s worse than that for the new geocentrists. Because, as Dr. MacAndrew demonstrates, the CMB data don’t point at anything. As MacAndrew says, “the CMB multipole vectors give directional information but no positional information. If you were an astronomical distance away from the Earth, you would not be able to use the CMB multipole vectors to navigate to it.” The claims of the new geocentrists that somehow the CMB “points at the Earth” is completely fallacious.



R. Sungenis: In their attempt to counter the evidence, Palm and MacAndrew end up making exaggerated claims. It reminds me of the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If someone were to ask a geocentrist, “Does the CMB point exactly to the Earth,” and he answered “Yes,” then Palm and MacAndrew would shout, “No it doesn’t, since the direction is off by perhaps a few degrees!” If he said “No,” then Palm and MacAndrew would shout, “See, I told you so. Even a geocentrist admits the CMB doesn’t point exactly to Earth.” This is the kind of shell game that Palm has learned to play from hanging around Alec MacAndrew.



But let’s examine the distinction MacAndrew is claiming, namely, “the CMB multipole vectors give directional information but no positional information.”



This is another word game to throw someone off track. Let’s say someone asked you, “Which direction must I travel to get to the North Pole?” To help him, you pull out your compass and wait for the dial to settle. You point him to the direction that the dial is pointing and declare, “That way is North Pole.” But is this exactly true? No, since the magnetic field to which the compass points is a few degrees away from the precise North Pole axis. But, of course, your direction will get him very close to the North Pole, and very far away from the South Pole, China, Russia, the North America. For all intents and purposes, the compass points to the North Pole as opposed to any other direction or position on Earth.



In order to have an exact position (or what we would call the “exact center” in the universe), we need an X axis, a Y axis and a Z axis, since that will give us three dimensions in Euclidean space. The CMB dipole and quadrupole give us the X and Y axis, but not the Z axis. Hence, the X and Y axis of the CMB provide a direction, but only an approximate position. That is why we have continually said that the CMB puts Earth “at or near the center of the universe.”



For the Z axis we depend on other information, such as quasars and galaxy alignment that the CMB cannot provide. For example, it has been discovered that the anisotropies 


of extended quasars and radio galaxies are aligned with the Earth’s equator and the North Celestial Pole (NCP).6 The discoverer, Ashok K. Signal, is a heliocentrist, and thus he describes his shocking discovery in those terms:




What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon. 



Copernican principle states that earth does not have any eminent or privileged position in the universe and therefore an observer’s choice of origin and/or orientation of his/her coordinate system should have no bearing on the appearance of the distant universe. Its natural generalization is the cosmological principle that the universe on a sufficiently large scale should appear homogeneous and isotropic, with no preferred directions, to all observers. However to us on earth the universe does show heterogeneous structures up to the scale of superclusters of galaxies and somewhat beyond, but it is assumed that it will all appear homogeneous and isotropic when observed on still larger scales, perhaps beyond a couple of hundreds of megaparsecs. Radio galaxies and quasars, the most distant discrete objects (at distances of many gigaparsecs or further) seen in the universe should trace the distribution of matter in the universe at that large scale and should therefore appear isotropically distributed from any vantage point in the universe including that on earth.7

Hence, as far as we can look into space with our telescopes, we find that the universe is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, even to the most distant radio galaxies and quasars. In light of this, Singal asks the obvious question: “Why should the equinox points [Earth’s equator] and the NCP have any bearing on the large scale distribution of matter in the universe?” This is a very perplexing question for those who believe in the Big Bang, heliocentrism and relativity, since the celestial anisotropies defy them all. The only answer left is that the Earth is in the very center of the universe, and that the latter moves with respect to the former.

All in all, there are three basic alignments of the Earth with the universe:

The cosmic microwave radiation’s dipole is aligned with the Earth’s equator.

The cosmic microwave radiation’s quadrupole and octupole are aligned with the Earth‐Sun ecliptic.

The distant quasars and radio galaxies are aligned with the Earth’s equator and the North Celestial Pole.




Essentially, these three alignments provide the X, Y and Z coordinates to place Earth in the very center of the known universe.







But even with only an X and Y axis of the CMB, many things can be extrapolated about our “position” in the universe, especially if the X and Y axis intersect, which is why the CMB alignment is called “The Axis of Evil.” Why would they call it such if it didn’t bother them? Why do they conclude the two axes alignment and its intersection is a threat to the Copernican Principle? Here’s why: in a Big Bang universe, where everything is supposed to be isotropic and homogeneous, we shouldn’t see anything even remotely resembling an X direction or a Y direction, much less an X and Y axial intersection!


In fact, the X and Y axis of the CMB in line with Earth has been admitted to exist to such a fine degree that scientists state that the CMB alignment is not with the Milky Way galaxy, but only with the Sun and Earth! In a 2010 paper, the University of Michigan team is astounded at the Earth‐centered results of the 2001 WMAP results (which were confirmed by the 2013 Planck results). In this study, galactocentrism (of the Milky Way) is eliminated in favor of a geocentric explanation:






Particularly puzzling are the alignments with solar system features. CMB anisotropy should clearly not be correlated with our local habitat. While the observed correlations seem to hint that there is contamination by a foreground or perhaps by the scanning strategy of the telescope, closer inspection reveals that there is no obvious way to explain the observed correlations. Moreover, if their explanation is that they are a foreground, then that will likely exacerbate other anomalies that we will discuss in section IVB below. Our studies indicate that the observed alignments are with the ecliptic plane, with the equinox or with the CMB dipole, and not with the Galactic plane: the alignments of the quadrupole and octopole planes with the equinox/ecliptic/dipole directions are

much more significant than those for the Galactic plane. Moreover, it is remarkably curious that it is precisely the ecliptic alignment that has been found on somewhat smaller scales using the power spectrum analyses of statistical isotropy.8

In the Univ. of Michigan’s 2012 paper, there appears to be no deviation from their previous conclusions, although perhaps some hand‐wringing. 

We will discover that if one uses the full‐sky ILC map then one finds very odd correlations in the map, that correlate unexpectedly to the Solar System....Looking into this anomaly more deeply we will find that it remains robust through all seven years of published WMAP data...



...quadrupole planes and the three octopole planes, implying that not only are these four planes aligned but they are nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic. Furthermore the normals [perpendicular vectors] are near the dipole, meaning that the planes are not just aligned and perpendicular to the ecliptic but oriented perpendicular to the Solar System’s motion through the Universe....However one does the statistical analysis, these apparent correlations with the Solar System geometry are puzzling. They do not seem to reflect the Galactic contamination that we might have expected from residual foreground contamination in the ILC map....For one, the observed quadrupole and octopole are aligned....This makes it difficult to explain them in terms of some localized effect on the sky....The best one can say is that these full‐sky solar‐system correlations remain unexplained.


The same team emphasizes several times in their paper that the CMB anisotropy does not match that which is predicted or accepted in the Big Bang model.

...and furthermore that it is very difficult to explain within the context of the canonical Inflationary Lambda Cold Dark Matter of cosmology [i.e., the Big Bang]....Our first observation is that none of those data curves look like the [LCDM] theory curve....It is extremely difficult to arrange for the Cl to have particular relative values in the context of the standard inflationary model...the observed sky, at least the part outside the Galaxy cut, seems not to respect the fundamental prediction of the standard cosmological model that the alm are independent random variables...for the lowest multipoles and the largest angular skies, the observations disagree markedly with the predictions of the [Big Bang] theory.9

This is in contradiction to the predictions of standard inflationary cosmological theory. One is therefore placed between a rock and a hard place. If the WMAP ILC is a reliable reconstruction of the full‐sky CMB, then there is overwhelming evidence [de Oliveira‐Costa et al. (2004); Eriksen et al.(2004); Copi et al. (2004); Schwarz et al. (2004); Copi et al. (2006); Copi et al. (2007); Land & Magueijo (2005a,b,c,d); Raki ́c & Schwarz (2007); for a review see Huterer (2006)] of extremely unlikely phase alignments between (at least) the quadrupole and octopole and between these multipoles and the geometry of the Solar System — a violation of statistical isotropy that happens by random chance in far less than 0.025 per cent of random realizations of the standard cosmology. If, on the other hand, the part of the ILC (and band maps) inside the Galaxy are unreliable as measurements of the true CMB, then the alignment of low‐l multipoles cannot be readily tested, but the magnitude of the two‐ point angular correlation function on large angular scales outside the Galaxy is smaller than would be seen in all but a few of every 10,000 realizations. We can only conclude that (i) we don’t live in a standard Ī›CDM Universe with a standard inflationary early history; (ii) we live in an extremely anomalous realization of that cosmology; (iii) there is a major error in the observations of both COBE and WMAP; or (iv) there is a major error in the reduction to maps performed by both COBE and WMAP. Whichever of these is correct, inferences from the large‐angle data about precise values of the parameters of the standard cosmological model should be regarded with particular skepticism.10

As we will see momentarily, the 2013 data from the Planck probe rules out options ii, iii and iv for the Copi team and leaves them with option i, namely, “we don’t live in a standard Ī›CDM Universe [Big Bang] with a standard inflationary early history.”



MacAndrew then states: “If you were an astronomical distance away from the Earth, you would not be able to use the CMB multipole vectors to navigate to it.”





Navigate? So if one follows the CMB by staring at the edge of the universe (where the CMB originates) and follows it for 45 billion light years (the presently believed radius of the universe) and it got you to within 5 to 10 degrees or so of the Earth (the median of MacAndrew’s claims for the alignment), don’t you think that would be a close enough “position,” especially since geocentrists hold that the Earth is geometrically off‐center with the edge of the universe? To arrive within 5 to 10 degrees of the Earth (which you already know is off‐center in the Neo‐Tychonic model) when you started your journey some 45 billion light years away is astounding! MacAndrew can’t see it because he doesn’t want a geocentric universe. As George Ellis warned us: 


"What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”







Palm: Beyond a rather nebulous assertion that these data are “significant” and that they somehow prove that you are too, the new geocentrists have never shown how the approximate alignments in the CMB data actual support their very specific contention that the Earth is the motionless center of the universe. As Dr. MacAndrew says, “Let’s ask a specific question about the CMB anomalies that the geocentrists should be able to answer if they are in a position to support their claims with evidence and logic. How precisely do the anomalies of the CMB support the geocentric argument?”



R. Sungenis: This shows that Palm doesn’t have a clue to either what we are claiming or what the evidence is showing. How sad that his personal grudge has gotten in the way of both understanding what is in the cosmos and what it means.

But as I’ve become more familiar with Mr. Palm’s school yard tactics, these incongruities are not done by accident. His purpose here is to make a straw man (i.e., lead his audience to believe that we have claimed the CMB shows the Earth is motionless in the universe) so that it will be easy for him to refute, since it is not true in the first place.

For those who want to know the truth, we have stated, at least for the last 11 years we have been presenting geocentrism, that the CMB puts us at or near the center of the universe. To put us into the exact dynamic center, we turn to either the evidence from quasar alignments and radio galaxies or the dozens of interferometer experiments of the 1800s and 1900s that show the Earth is motionless. The evidence is rather overwhelming in favor of geocentrism. So much so that anytime either Palm or MacAndrew would like to debate me in an open, oral and public forum on these issues, I will both pay for their plane fares and accommodations to the city where the debate will be held.

Of course, all you will hear from both of them after my challenge are the proverbial crickets.



Palm: To make my own scientific prediction, you will never see a straight answer to that question from the new geocentrists.



R. Sungenis: Perhaps the reason why is that Mr. Palm’s question is crooked. From the mistake he made above by saying that we hold the CMB shows a motionless Earth, it is quite apparent that David Palm doesn’t know how to ask a straight question in order to get a straight answer. But since I know his scientific illiteracy very well, I reframed the question and gave you the straight answer to it.



Palm: Now, some excerpts from Alec MacAndrew’s The CMB and Geocentrism:






Source: Wikipedia Commons, "Pseudo‐Science"
  



Palm: The geocentrists approach to the issue is deeply unscientific...

R. Sungenis: This shows that MacAndrew is irrational and bigoted. It is one thing to disagree with your opponent’s interpretations of the scientific evidence (which happens constantly in modern science among those who even hold to its Copernican principles), but it is quite another to accuse your opponent of being “deeply unscientific.” Palm and MacAndrew are on a quest to make a boogeyman of their opponents so as to win by impression rather than solid argument.

Palm: ...in the sense that they are committed a priori to the idea that the Earth is static in the exact centre of the Universe, and they excavate and use any piece of evidence that appears to support their case – even if it is fundamentally incompatible with some other argument that they have made elsewhere.

R. Sungenis: This is a simple case of the pot calling the kettle black. If there is anyone who is “committed a‐priori to the idea that the Earth is not in the center of the universe, and will excavate and use any piece of evidence that appears to support his case,” it is Alec MacAndrew.

Palm does something similar, but it is with the ecclesiastical evidence instead of the scientific. For example, Palm will nit‐pick through the Church Fathers trying to find some loophole in their statements in an attempt to claim that they had no consensus on geocentrism when, in fact, the Church herself has said that they did. He has been refuted time and again (see DDP4, DDP5 and DDP6 at http://debunkingdavidpalm.blogspot.ca/).

Likewise, Palm will ignore or downplay the fact that the Church allowed an imprimatur to be given to a book advocating heliocentrism in 1820 only because Pius VII, who allowed the imprimatur against the advice of the Master of the Sacred Palace, Fr. Anfossi, was deceived by Cardinal Olivieri who told bald‐faced lies to Pius VII about why Galileo and heliocentrism were condemned in 1616 and 1633.

Palm also changes the meaning of words and ignores the context when, for example, he tries to neutralize the statements in the 1566 Tridentine catechism that teach geocentrism.




Palm also tries to minimize the fact that two popes of the Church facilitated and approved of the condemnations of both Galileo and heliocentrism by claiming that the decisions were “not infallible,” thus ignoring the stipulations in Lumen Gentium 12 and 25 that not only are we to hold such statements in authority, but that the whole Church, which held to geocentrism without deviation for two millennia, “cannot err,” since it is led by the Holy Spirit in its Ordinary magisterium.



In effect, Palm and MacAndrew are two peas in a pod, and neither of them can be trusted to fairly present the evidence.



Palm: Their belief is unshakeable in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary.



R. Sungenis: Perhaps that is because neither Palm nor MacAndrew have ever given any proof to the contrary. Let me say it again so Mr. Palm and Mr. MacAndrew clearly understand: Show us just one proof that the Earth moves and we will concede the debate and will give you $1000.00 in hard cash.

Unfortunately, what you will hear after this challenge from Palm and MacAndrew are the proverbial crickets.



Palm: What’s more, by misunderstanding or misrepresentation they often mangle the science, and they make far stronger claims than the evidence warrants, as we shall see.



R. Sungenis If what Mr. Palm presented above is any indication of how he is going to prove that we “make far stronger claims than the evidence warrants,” you might as well turn the light off and go to sleep.



Palm: Strict geocentrism is also a far more extreme position than would necessarily follow if the Copernican Principle were to be violated. It is clear that The Principle movie is a Trojan Horse for strict geocentrism, even though DeLano in particular claims that the film contains no more than an examination of the Copernican Principle.



R. Sungenis: You can see what kind of world Mr. Palm lives in. He is the one that accuses his opponents of “conspiracy theories,” but you can easily see that it is Mr. Palm who is creating a conspiracy theory about “Trojan Horses.” That Palm won’t even allow a critique of the tenets of the Copernican Principle onto the discussion table, shows that he comes to this debate with a virulent and deep‐seated bias.



Palm: The New Geocentrists would have you believe that Ī›CDM, indeed all of modern cosmology, is a theory in crisis and that the entire edifice is about to collapse, clearing a building site for a geocentric temple. The reality is different – astronomical and astrophysical observations over the last two decades have strengthened the evidence for the Standard Model or something very like it. There is no conspiracy of silence – anomalies and other pieces of evidence challenging the Standard Model, such as they are, are all detected, identified, published and discussed openly by the physics community without whom the new geocentrists would not be aware that the CMB exists, much less that there are unexplained anomalies associated with it.

R. Sungenis: And thus Palm and MacAndrew will go on living in their dream world and pretend that the wolf isn’t blowing down their house of straw. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at what the European Space Agency said when the Planck data came back in March 2013:


1. “One of the most surprising findings is that the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave radiation (CMB) temperatures at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard [Big Bang] model.”

2. “Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard [Big Bang] model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look.”

If you then want to see how the ESA, similar to MacAndrew, tries to run between the raindrops so as not to get wet, look at this statement:

“We see an almost perfect fit to the standard model of cosmology, but with intriguing features that force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions.”

Come again? Why would you need to “rethink some of your basic assumptions” if the CMB was a perfect fit with the Big Bang? How can you even suggest this, when just two sentences earlier you said, “the CMB...at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard [Big Bang] model?”

Perhaps the ESA is doing the same thing here that we saw earlier. Since the CMB is about 95% isotropic and homogeneous, one could make a plausible argument that the CMB agrees to 95% with the Big Bang theory! But, of course, we aren’t concerned with the 95% but with the 5% that nullifies the Big Bang theory! If you don’t remember, just think of the two swords going through the Jello mold.


In the end, as the ESA admitted the Planck probe data

  • “do not match those predicted by the standard model”
  • runs “counter to the prediction made by the standard model” 
  • and have “features that force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions,”
In essence, this means the Big Bang theory and the cosmological principle were falsified by the 2013 Planck data. But this is being finessed and glossed over due to a prior commitment to the Copernican Principle.

Palm: Is it possible that Ī›CDM is entirely wrong and that cosmologists, astrophysicists and theoretical physicists have been barking up the wrong tree for decades? Of course it is possible. There is no absolute proof in science and it is possible that some future observation or combination of observations will force a reassessment of the fundamentals.

R. Sungenis: According to the above statement by the ESA, a “reassessment of the fundamentals” has already been forced upon them by the COBE, WMAP and Planck data. But like most evidence in science that runs counter to the reigning paradigms, it will be ignored. As Max Planck once said, “Science advances funeral by funeral.”

Palm: However, given the complex interlocking empirical evidence it is unlikely that Ī›CDM is entirely wrong; and even if it is, that doesn’t imply that geocentrism or anything like it is correct. The fallacy of False Dichotomy, “you are wrong so I must be right”, is one of which the geocentrists are frequently and unashamedly guilty. With that in mind, it’s time now to look at the anomalies in the CMB that don’t appear to fit the Standard Model.

R. Sungenis: This is the kind of argument you would expect from someone who knows that he hasn’t done well and that the evidence points to his defeat. It’s like a boxer who loses a fight saying, “Well, just because you beat me doesn’t mean you’re the best boxer in the world.” In other words, Palm and MacAndrew may finally have to admit that the Big Bang is in Big Trouble, but they want to make sure that you don’t go for the alternative, which is geocentrism. Gosh, anything but that!

Again, I can understand MacAndrew’s reticence since he is an atheist who simply does not want to admit that the Catholic Church was right against Galileo, but Palm continues to be a puzzle. You would think that any faithful Catholic would welcome the new scientific evidence and finally realize that all the intellectual beatings the Catholic Church sustained for the past 400 years were misplaced, since it appears science has shown the Church was right. But for some reason, Mr. Palm is squirming and kicking and shouting as hard as he can. What’s the real reason, David?

Here’s a fact for you: did you know that 75% of Catholic college‐age kids who enter the typical American university (where Big Bangism, Copernicanism, Relativity, Evolution, the Bible has errors, etc. is taught with abandon) leave the Catholic faith? That’s the kind of education Palm and MacAndrew are supporting. It’s high time that these atheists and agnostics be exposed for what they have done to our children.

Palm: Let’s look at the geocentrists’ position regarding their private story about cosmology and the CMB measurements (and really about Enlightenment science in general). For them, cosmology (indeed all of physics from Copernicus onwards) is a huge modernist conspiracy to displace the Earth in the minds of the public from what they see as its rightful place in the centre of the cosmos. They believe that “inconvenient” discoveries are swept under the carpet to maintain the conspiracy of silence that the science community has erected, and that in their movie, they are tearing down this veil for everyone’s benefit. As far as they are concerned, science in general and physics in particular is an atheistic plot to undermine Man’s special place in the universe. Well, if the disciplines of cosmology and physics are conspiring with atheists in this way, it must be the most incompetent and impotent conspiracy of all time. What sort of conspirators rush to publish “inconvenient” findings as soon as they are discovered and openly discuss their implications for the conspiracy? The geocentric crew would have no idea that the CMB has anisotropies and that some of those anisotropies are anomalous if it were not for the scientific publications of the very same people they regard as conspirators. For heaven’s sake, they wouldn’t even be aware of the existence of the CMB without them.

R. Sungenis: So, Alec MacAndrew wants to play the “damned if you do; damned if you don’t game.” We are damned if we don’t read the scientific literature and he will call us illiterate bumpkins; but if we do read the scientific literature, we are told that we are using it to promote a “conspiracy theory” to reveal the evidence that we couldn’t create unless we read the said literature! Go figure.

This is similar to MacAndrew’s complaint that I use General Relativity to support geocentrism. Since General Relativity allows the Earth to be motionless in the center of the universe, MacAndrew complains that I am using HIS science to prove geocentrism, and that such usage of General Relativity by geocentrists should not be allowed because geocentrists don’t believe in General Relativity! Ah, yes, I see that MacAndrew didn’t take Logic 101 when he was studying physics in England. Even jujitsu artists know that the best way to defeat your opponent is to use his own weight against him, and then you merely shrug off his weight when you are done throwing him.

Palm: Sungenis lambasts cosmologists for modifying the Big Bang model by introducing inflation, dark matter and dark energy but fails to acknowledge that modifying the hypothesis to take account of new observations is how science works. People don’t propose overarching scientific theories out of the blue that are absolutely correct in every tiny detail like some vast infallible revelation.

R. Sungenis:  Notice how MacAndrew tries to make “inflation, dark matter and dark energy” as mere matters of “tiny detail”! Hey, MacAndrew, you missed the pink elephant in the room! It’s not a matter of “tiny detail” but a matter of gargantuan missing evidence! Get into reality, would you?

Science has been searching for dark energy and dark matter for about 50 years, and hasn’t found one stinkin’ piece of empirical evidence of either! And the only reason they are on a constant hunt to find them is because, after they found some other evidence that doesn’t fit the Big Bang, they were forced to invent dark energy and dark matter to make their Big Bang universe work!

They then invented “inflation” for the Big Bang to take care of the fact that Einstein limited the speed of light to c, but then when they had to make the universe accelerate its “expansion” beyond c, they abandoned Einstein’s speed of light and opted for Einstein’s General Relativity since it allows light and mass to go any speed!

Does that sound like credible science to you? No, far from it. It is a desperate attempt to save their sheepskins and their government grants, while they sweep all the ad hoc hypothesis and downright contradictions under the proverbial rug.

Palm: Our understanding of the Universe is gradually improved, step by step by a few clever ideas, a vast quantity of hard labour and false starts, dead ends, and breakthroughs. Physics and cosmology is a work in progress, and the fact that the Standard Model has evolved over time to accommodate new observations is a crucial strength – going where the evidence leads is what makes science the best way that we know to understand the natural world.

R. Sungenis: Of course, MacAndrew’s special pleading tries to put the best spin on the so‐called “trial and error” of modern cosmology, but the reality is quite different. Listen to the words of Gerard de Vaucouleurs:

Less than 50 years after the birth of what we are pleased to call “modern cosmology,” when so few empirical facts are passably well established, when so many different over‐simplified models of the universe are still competing for attention, is it, may we ask, really credible to claim, or even reasonable to hope, that we are presently close to a definitive solution of the cosmological problem?.... Unfortunately, a study of the history of cosmology reveals disturbing parallelisms between modern cosmology and medieval scholasticism; often the borderline between sophistication and sophistry, between numeration and numerology, seems very precarious indeed. Above all I am concerned by an apparent loss of contact with empirical evidence and observational facts, and, worse, by a deliberate refusal on the part of some theorists to accept such results when they appear to be in conflict with some of the present oversimplified and therefore intellectually appealing theories of the universe...doctrines that frequently seem to be more concerned with the fictitious properties of ideal (and therefore nonexistent) universes than with the actual world revealed by observations.

He adds:

With few exceptions modern theories of cosmology have come to be variations on the homogeneous, isotropic models of general relativity. Other theories are usually referred to as ‘unorthodox,’ probably as a warning to students against heresy. When inhomogeneities [NB: theories that can lead to an Earth‐ centered universe] are considered (if at all), they are treated as unimportant fluctuations amenable to first‐order variational treatment....But if nature refuses to cooperate, or for a time remains silent, there is a serious danger that the constant repetition of what is in truth merely a set of a priori assumptions (however rational, plausible, or otherwise commendable) will in time become accepted dogma that the unwary may uncritically accept as established fact or as an unescapable logical requirement. There is also the danger inherent in all established dogmas that the surfacing of contrary opinion and evidence will be resisted in every way. 11

With few exceptions, modern theories of cosmology have come to be variations on the homogeneous, isotropic models of general relativity. Other theories are usually referred to as ‘unorthodox,’ probably as a warning to students against heresy. When inhomogeneities [read: theories that can lead to 
an Earth‐centered universe] are considered (if at all), they are treated as unimportant fluctuations amenable to first‐order variational treatment.12


Palm: [NB: One could add that the new geocentrists regularly feel perfectly free to make up ad hoc "explanations" for various phenomena, modify their position at will (e.g. their "explanation" for stellar parallax), and pull "evidence" for their position out of thin air.]



R. Sungenis: Not quite. The first one to “make up ad hoc explanations for various phenomena” was Copernicus himself. He couldn’t get his model to work correctly, so he began to add the same epicycles to his model that he had criticized in Ptolemy’s model! In the end, Copernicus ended up with more epicycles than Ptolemy! Tell me where you’ve read that in your teenager’s high school science book. You haven’t, because it is a most well‐kept secret. (Of course, Palm would now accuse me of starting a “conspiracy theory”).



As for stellar parallax, we simply use the already agreed‐upon distance between the Sun and the Earth to answer parallax, aberration, the seasons, and the CMB dipole anisotropy. Unlike Big Bang cosmology, we aren’t inventing anything. The distance between the Sun and the Earth is already there. The question becomes: how are we going to use it? That is a far cry from inventing such things as inflation, dark energy, dark matter, and a speed of light and mass that sometimes is confined to c and at other times can exceed c.



Palm: What hope do the geocentrists have to understand it and to draw reasoned conclusions from the measurements, devoid as they are of scientific training and mathematical skills?



R. Sungenis: Devoid? Let’ see. I was a physics major in college. My co‐author, Robert Bennett, has a Ph.D. in Physics. My major consultant, Gerhardus Bouw, has a Ph.D. in Astronomy. We have all published papers and books showing that we know the science and the math. Once again, Palm and MacAndrew are creating a straw man of their own choosing.



Palm: The geocentrists’ key misunderstanding of the science which is the foundation for their most vociferous claims is their misinterpretation of the directional alignment of the multipoles as data which yields positional information. The alignments, anomalous as they are, carry no information about the location of the Earth or any other object.



R. Sungenis: And we have seen above what a total misrepresentation MacAndrew’s caricature is of what we do and the evidence itself.




Palm: The fact that there are unexplained anomalies in the CMB is undeniable and no‐ one is seeking to deny it. But the key question is whether these anomalies warrant the rhetoric and extreme claims of the geocentrists.



R. Sungenis: Well, we already saw that the only one engaging in “extreme claims” is David Palm, since he mistakenly holds that “the approximate alignments in the CMB data actual support their very specific contention that the Earth is the motionless center of the universe.” Obviously, since Palm doesn’t even know what his opponent is saying, he has discredited himself.



Palm: In all of these quotes, the geocentrists interpret the vectors that define the orientation of the multipoles to be carrying positional information. In other words, they imagine that the multipole vectors are lines which pass through the Earth, and coincide at the Earth in a unique manner. They imagine that there is no other planet or star or other body in the Universe where the vectors coincide, and that therefore they uniquely point to the Earth’s location. However, this interpretation is simply wrong. The vectors define directions but carry no information about location. They are not unique lines on which the Earth is located. They don’t *point* to anything. The CMB multipole vectors give directional information but no positional information. If you were an astronomical distance away from the Earth, you would not be able to use the CMB multipole vectors to navigate to it.


R. Sungenis: I already explained this above, but, for the fun of it, let’s pile on!

First, can Palm or MacAndrew show us any statement in the scientific literature that says “there are other planets or stars or other bodies in the Universe where the vectors coincide”? There isn’t any, not even a peep. It’s easy to make assertions. Backing them up is another story altogether.

So, Mr. MacAndrew, where is the evidence that the CMB lines up with any other body in the universe, except the Earth and Sun? Where? Curious minds want to know. They want to know if you really know what you are talking about or are just a hired‐hand who is paid by Mr. Palm to present himself as a credible critic.

Second, let’s look closer at the literature:

The large‐angle correlations of the cosmic microwave background exhibit several statistically significant anomalies compared to the standard inflationary cosmology...the quadrupole‐octopole correlation is excluded from being a chance occurrence in a gaussian random statistically isotropic sky at >99.87%....The correlation of the normals [perpendicular vectors] with the ecliptic poles suggest an unknown source or sink of CMB radiation or an unrecognized systematic. If it is a physical source or sink in the inner solar system it would cause an annual modulation in the time‐ordered 
data....Physical correlation of the CMB with the equinoxes is difficult to imagine, since the WMAP satellite has no knowledge of the inclination of the Earth’s spin axis.13


Here’s another:



"Moreover, the combined quadrupole plus octopole is surprisingly aligned with the geometry and direction of motion of the solar system: the plane they define is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane and to the plane defined by the dipole direction, and the ecliptic plane carefully separates stronger from weaker extrema, running within a couple of degrees of the null‐contour between a maximum and a minimum over more than 120◦ of the sky. Even given the alignment of the quadrupole and octopole with each other, we find that their alignment with the ecliptic is unlikely at > 98% C.L., and argue that it is in fact unlikely at > 99.9% C.L."14



And another:



Particularly puzzling are the alignments with solar system features. CMB anisotropy should clearly not be correlated with our local habitat. While the observed correlations seem to hint that there is contamination by a foreground or perhaps by the scanning strategy of the telescope, closer inspection reveals that there is no obvious way to explain the observed correlations. Moreover, if their explanation is that they are a foreground, then that will likely exacerbate other anomalies that we will discuss in section IVB below. Our studies indicate that the observed alignments are with the ecliptic plane, with the equinox or with the CMB dipole, and not with the Galactic plane: the alignments of the quadrupole and octopole planes with the equinox/ecliptic/dipole directions are much more significant than those for the Galactic plane. Moreover, it is remarkably curious that it is precisely the ecliptic alignment that has been 


found on somewhat smaller scales using the power spectrum analyses of statistical isotropy.15


And another:


What they found contradicted the standard inflationary cosmology – the hemispheres often had very different amounts of power. But what was most surprising was that the pair of hemispheres that were the most different were the ones lying above and below the ecliptic, the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun. This result was the first sign that the CMB fluctuations, which were supposed to be cosmological in origin...have a solar system signal in them – that is, a type of observational artifact.16

Here’s my favorite – from good ol’ Laurence Krauss:

But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe....The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we’re the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect, or maybe it’s telling us there’s something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there’s something wrong with our theories on the larger scales.17

Here are a few more:

Developing the multipole vectors allowed us to examine how the CMB’s large‐ scale features align with each other and the ecliptic – the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun....Not only are the quadrupole and octopole planar, but the planes are nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic....The likelihood of these alignments happening by chance is less than 0.1 percent....Why CMB patterns are oriented to the solar system is not at all understood at this time.18


The significance of these findings may go over the heads of most people not familiar with astrophysical language, but the simple interpretation is that all the radiation in the universe, whether it is symmetric or asymmetric, is centered around the Earth. This is confirmed when Schwarz, et al., state later: “Within that plane, they sit unexpectedly close to the equinoxes – the two points on the sky where the projection of the earth’s equator onto the sky crosses the ecliptic.” In other words, all the data show that, as far out as our telescopes can see, space is oriented geocentrically. What are the chances that this could happen by accident? The team of Copernicans had to admit that the “combined chance probability is certainly less than one in 10,000.” So upsetting is this evidence to the scientific status quo that another magazine, New Scientist, labeled the same universal orientation around Earth’s equatorial plane as, “THE AXIS OF EVIL,” since this geocentric picture virtually destroys its cherished Copernican principle.19 This phrase was taken by a paper written by Kate Land and JoĆ£o Magueijo in a 2005 appropriately titled, “The Axis of Evil.”

In a New Scientist article of July 2005 with what many would consider a career‐ending title, “Did the big bang really happen?” Marcus Chown covered Land and Magueijo’s “Axis of Evil” paper in great detail. The implications are staggering for modern cosmology. Chown writes:

Yet there is more evidence that there could be something wrong with the standard model of cosmology. And it is evidence that many cosmologists are finding harder to dismiss because it comes from the jewel in the crown of cosmology instruments, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. “It could be telling us something fundamental about our universe, maybe even that the simplest big bang model is wrong,” says JoĆ£o Magueijo of Imperial College London. Since its launch in 2001, WMAP has been quietly taking the temperature of the universe from its vantage point 1.5 million kilometres out in space. The probe measures the way the temperature of the cosmic microwave background varies across the sky.

...because the cosmic background radiation is a feature of the universe as a whole rather than any single object in it, none of the hot or cold regions should be aligned with structures in our corner of the cosmos. Yet this is exactly what some researchers are claiming from the WMAP results.


Earlier this year, Magueijo and his Imperial College colleague Kate Land reported that they had found a bizarre alignment in the cosmic microwave background. At first glance, the pattern of hot and cold spots appeared random, as expected. But when they looked more closely, they found something unexpected. It is as if you were listening to an anarchic orchestra playing some random cacophony, and yet when you picked out the violins, trombones and clarinets separately, you discovered that they are playing the same tune.



Like an orchestral movement, the WMAP results can be analysed as a blend of patterns of different spatial frequencies. When Magueijo and Land looked at the hot and cold spots this way, they noticed a striking similarity between the individual patterns. Rather than being spattered randomly across the sky, the spots in each pattern seemed to line up along the same direction. With a good eye for a newspaper headline, Magueijo dubbed this alignment the axis of evil. “If it is true, this is an astonishing discovery,” he says.



That’s because the result flies in the face of big bang theory, which rules out any such special or preferred direction. So could the weird effect be down to something more mundane, such as a problem with the WMAP satellite? Charles Bennett, who leads the WMAP mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, discounts that possibility. “I have no reason to think that any anomaly is an artefact of the instrument,” he says.



“The big question is: what could have caused it,” asks Magueijo. One possibility, he says, is that the universe is shaped like a slab, with space extending to infinity in two dimensions but spanning only about 20 billion light years in the third dimension. Or the universe might be shaped like a bagel.



Interestingly enough, Magueijo concludes by showing how a geocentric cosmology with a rotating universe is one viable solution to the WMAP evidence:



Another way to create a preferred direction would be to have a rotating universe, because this singles out the axis of rotation as different from all other directions.20



Earlier in the article Chown shows additional implications for WMAP’s discoveries against the Big Bang.



What if the big bang never happened?...“Look at the facts,” says Riccardo Scarpa of the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile. “The basic big bang model fails to predict what we observe in the universe in three major 


ways.” The temperature of today’s universe, the expansion of the cosmos, and even the presence of galaxies, have all had cosmologists scrambling for fixes. “Every time the basic big bang model has failed to predict what we see, the solution has been to bolt on something new ‐ inflation, dark matter and dark energy,” Scarpa says...

“This isn’t science,” says Eric Lerner who is president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West Orange, New Jersey, and one of the conference organizers. “Big bang predictions are consistently wrong and are being fixed after the event.” So much so, that today’s “standard model” of cosmology has become an ugly mishmash comprising the basic big bang theory, inflation and a generous helping of dark matter and dark energy.



Chown adds Magueijo’s comment to this conclusion:

Clearly, such a universe would flout a fundamental assumption of all big bang models: that the universe is the same in all places and in all directions. “People made these assumptions because, without them, it was impossible to simplify Einstein's equations enough to solve them for the universe,” says Magueijo. And if those assumptions are wrong, it could be curtains for the standard model of cosmology. That may not be a bad thing, according to Magueijo. “The standard model is ugly and embarrassing,” he says. “I hope it will soon come to breaking point.” But whatever replaced it would of course have to predict all the things the standard model predicts. “This would be very hard indeed,” concedes Magueijo.21

Obviously, we aren’t making up the idea that the CMB is aligned with the Earth’s equator and the ecliptic. This comes from the top scientists in the world today who have poured over the CMB evidence.

Conversely, like MacAndrew, NASA puts their typical spin on these “anomalies.” As we would expect, NASA’s published paper on the CMB22 contains not one word about the anisotropies showing evidence of what has become known among all cosmologists as the “Axis of Evil.”

Likewise, the names of Land and Magueijo who were the first to coin the “Axis of Evil” in 2004, are not mentioned in NASA’s paper. NASA’s paper doesn’t contain one word about the axes of the CMB dipole, quadrupole and octupole aligning with the Sun‐Earth ecliptic or with the Earth’s equinoxes, respectively. It doesn’t mention the names of Copi, Huterer, Starkman, and Schwarz from the University of Michigan, who have done
the most work on the anisotropies of the WMAP data and have thus discovered the Earth’s unique alignment with the CMB. Even Max Tegmark, although he is mentioned twice in NASA’s paper, is cited only from 1997‐1998, long before 2003 when he saw the vector poles of the CMB pointing from Earth to Virgo, and which discovery led to the work of Copi and his colleagues.

No wonder I’m quoted in The Principle saying that “NASA has taken down stuff that might hint to a geocentric universe!”

Instead NASA admits to various instances in which it unilaterally chose to ignore the CMB poles, such as “We start with a simple foreground model consisting of several simple power laws, and progressively add complexity to the model to improve the fit. The foreground model we use involves temperature only; we did not try to fit polarization.”23 But the whole reason for the consternation regarding WMAP’s data is its more than obvious Earth‐centered polarization results. NASA’s intention is confirmed by an even more revealing statement:

The CMB is modeled as a blackbody with constant thermodynamic temperature. To make the CMB fit look statistically isotropic, we add a prior that the CMB must be within 5 Ī¼K rms of the nine‐year ILC. Without this prior, the data do not constrain the CMB very tightly in the galactic plane, and we find the CMB preferring values lower than ‐250 Ī¼K.24

In other words, NASA is telling us that they squeezed the data into their preferred (or “prior”) molds in order to “make the CMB fit look statistically isotropic.” We see that isotropy, not anisotropy, is the goal of NASA. Why? The following comment reveals that if they don’t use “prior” molds then “the data do not constrain the CMB very tightly.” This relates back to NASA’s opening statement that “The WMAP mission has resulted in a highly constrained Ī›CDM cosmological model.” That is, NASA wants the CMB to be as isotropic as possible since this will be the best fit for the Big Bang universe it is promoting. In other words, NASA is admitting that it will seek to conform the data to the predicted isotropic Big Bang model as much as possible. This is what modern science has become. The model is put on a pedestal and the data is made to conform to it rather than the reverse. We see right from the get‐go what NASA’s intentions are when we see it juxtaposing “CMB anisotropies” with “CMB anomalies.”25 It is only an “anomaly” to one who wants isotropy so that he can make the evidence fit his pre‐conceived model.


The CMB Dipole

Of particular interest is the CMB dipole. In an attempt to lessen the severity of the Axis of Evil against the Copernican Principle, some try to separate the dipole from higher l values (quadrupole, octuopole, etc.) and claim that the dipole is caused by “the peculiar velocity of the Earth relative to the co‐moving cosmic rest frame as the planet moves at some 371 km/s towards the constellation Leo.”26 Of course, this solution just begs the question, since it assumes, as proved, that the Earth moves.



Additionally, there are three glaring anomalies in this claim. First, as John Ralston points out, in such solutions they are “forgetting there is an unknown cosmological piece,” namely, “By an apparently random accident the dipole happens to lie in the plane of the ecliptic, and point along Virgo. This is accepted with very little discussion, and nobody disbelieves the dipole.”27



In other words, attributing the dipole to a movement of the Earth through the CMB is convenient enough, but it becomes a little too convenient when that movement is pointing to Virgo, which just happens to be in the same direction as the “Axis of Evil.”



Even if it were true that the Earth is moving against the CMB (and not vice‐versa, as in the geocentric system), still, this explanation misses the elephant in the room, i.e., that the entire universe, as represented by the CMB dipole, is aligned with the tiny Earth. One has to be blind or biased to miss this.







Second, we will notice from the graphs that the dipole axis is almost perpendicular to the quadrupole/octupole axis. Big Bang cosmology claims that the dipole axis is created by the sun‐earth system moving through the CMB, which creates a Doppler blue shift. But how does Big Bang cosmology then explain the quadrupole/octupole axis, which is perpendicular to the dipole axis? It cannot be created by a movement of the sun‐earth system through the CMB since, obviously, the sun‐earth system cannot be going in one direction to create the dipole and, at the same time, going in an orthogonal direction to create the quadrupole and octupole. Something is definitely amiss here.



Third, a recent paper by Kothari, et al, shows that attributing the dipole to the presumed motion of the solar system through the CMB does not match the CMB data. They first report a paper by Singal (2011) showing an apparent solar velocity of 1600 km/sec, which is about four times higher than the previously accepted 369 km/sec, and which “suggests a potential violation of the cosmological principle” and thus “the Universe may be intrinsically anisotropic with the preferred axis approximately in the direction of the CMBR dipole.” With additional research, they conclude “the data is not consistent with the CMBR dipole. It clearly indicates the presence of an intrinsic dipole anisotropy which cannot be explained in terms of local motion,” which result is confirmed at a “4 – 5 sigma” level. This leads them to the conclusion that the “anisotropy we observe may have a physical origin.”29 In other words, even if one were to adopt the heliocentric concept that the solar system is moving through a fixed CMB, the data shows it would be moving much too slowly to produce the dipole that is observed. The dipole energy, then, must originate from an inherent microwave polarity in the composition of the Universe and thus means the Universe is physically divided in two along the Earth’s equator.




Palm: What’s more, most of the planets in our solar system have orbits that align with the quadrupole and octopole to much the same degree that the Earth does. In fact, because the alignment of the multipoles with the ecliptic is only approximate, there is a vast number of planets in our galaxy (as well as an unimaginably large number in other galaxies) that have orbits that align more precisely with the quadrupole and octopole than the Earth does. The anomalous CMB alignments simply do not distinguish the Earth in the way the geocentrists imagine that they do, and they certainly don’t point to it as being in any way central.



R. Sungenis: Once again, assertions are easy. Proving them is hard. Can Palm and MacAndrew show us just one place in the literature where someone says that the planets are more closely aligned with the quadrupole than the Earth is? Just one will do, Mac. Or is this going to be another one of your ipse dixit assertions similar to the “16 degrees” assertion you made about the Planck data?



But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the planets are aligned closer to the quadrupole than the Earth is. If the planets are aligned with the CMB quadrupole, that proves the point that the solar system, as a whole, is aligned with the rest of the universe! That makes the solar system the hub of the universe, just like Laurence Krauss said! Thank you Alec! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now all you need to do is look at the interferometer evidence that shows the Earth is motionless, and then you’ll be on our side.


Now, let’s back up a bit. The literature above says the CMB quadrupole is aligned with the ecliptic. What is the ecliptic? It is the 23.5 degree angle (with respect to the Earth’s equator) of which the planets revolve around the Sun. And since the greatest deviation from the ecliptic is Mars by 7 degrees, then the ecliptic, as a whole, is very close to the 23.5 degree tilt of the cosmos against the Earth’s equator. So, would the planets be in much distinction from the Earth if we just measured things with respect to the ecliptic? No, of course not. Hence, MacAndrew’s argument is specious, at best.

But the CMB is also aligned with the Earth’s equator. It is called the dipole, and its signal is 1000 times greater than the quadrupole. The CMB dipole is not aligned with the equator of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto; only with Earth. Hence, that makes Earth special.

When we then add the ecliptic alignment, it doesn’t really matter whether the planets share a little of it with the 23.5 degree angle. We would expect such. In other words, MacAndrew is trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill, and is forgetting the pink elephant in the room.



Palm: the alignment of low multipoles does not change very rapidly with distance because of the size of the structures that give rise to them (remember that the octopole has only eight lobes and the quadrupole just four lobes on the entire sky) – the low 
multipoles represent vast structures in the present universe. So the CMB alignments would be the same not just at the Earth, but anywhere within a few billion light years of the Earth. They give directional but not positional information.



R. Sungenis: Notice what MacAndrew just did. He confined the analysis of the octupole and quadrupole but eliminated the dipole! As such, he ignored the most important point that makes Earth special, that is, that the CMB of the quadrupole and octopole intersect the CMB dipole, and Earth is at or near the intersection! There is no galaxy or planet or sun or anything that fits that description!

This shows clearly that Alex MacAndrew doesn’t know what he is talking about, or has deliberately truncated the evidence to appear in his favor.


Palm: The observation stands that the Earth is a planet orbiting one of billions of ordinary stars located in an unremarkable place in the spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies. That observation has not been modified by any recent observations.

R. Sungenis: Sorry, but it has never been proven that the Earth is either moving or on one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. The truth is, we don’t even know what the Milky Way looks like or even if it spins. There are no cameras outside the Milky Way taking pictures for us. The picture you see above is merely an artist’s rendering of what the Big Bangers and Copernicans believe the Milky Way looks like, which is all based on their supposition that there was a giant explosion 13.7 billion years ago that eventually formed galaxies. Their logic is this: if the Earth is moving (which everyone “knows” to be the case, right?), then it moves around the Sun, and the Sun must then revolve around a galaxy, and if our galaxy is like Andromeda, then it must be a spiral galaxy, and Viola! we are taught that the Earth is on the spiral arm of the Milky Way! But they don’t know these things at all. It is all theory, based on their presupposition, which they can’t prove.

Palm: In order to demonstrate that a violation of the Cosmological Principle results in the Earth being a special or privileged place, one needs at least a clear definition of what is meant by being in a special or privileged place. Well, at least we know what the New Geocentrists mean by it – they mean that the Earth is physically static and at the precise
centre of the Universe. Violations of the Cosmological Principle in themselves are not evidence for this.

R. Sungenis: So MacAndrew now makes the same mistake that Palm made, that is, by conflating the CMB evidence with the stipulation that the Earth is motionless. Obviously, then, neither Palm nor MacAndrew know what their opponents are saying before they attempt to answer their arguments.

Palm: The Universe does not have to conform to our preconceptions. There is no guarantee that the physics of the Universe is simple, and no reason to think that we won’t continue to discover more about the details the closer we look. Geocentrists project their own way of doing “science” on to professional scientists. They are wedded to a particular a priori conclusion and so they think the professionals are the same.

R. Sungenis: The fact is both we and MacAndrew come to the evidence with presuppositions. It cannot be avoided. MacAndrew’s presupposition is that there is no God and all that we see came into being by time and chance. Obviously, he can’t believe in a central Earth because that would mean that Someone put it there, since a central Earth cannot happen by chance.

We come to the evidence by believing that Someone greater than us put it together, and actually revealed to us how He did so. It’s called Genesis, Joshua and the Psalms. Happy the man who discovers that what he reads from this Someone can be verified by the science this Someone also created. Sad is the man who looks at it all and still denies that Someone created it. Alec MacAndrew is to be pitied. David Palm is to be excoriated for leading MacAndrew down a blind alley.

Palm: They fear and ignore evidence contrary to their conclusion, so they believe that the professional must do the same.

R. Sungenis: Like what, Mr. MacAndrew? What evidence have we feared or ignored? The interpretations and ipse dixit judgments you made in this paper are not evidence. They only show how blind you are to the evidence.

Palm: In fact, cosmologists and astrophysicists welcome novel signals (and the anomalies can be regarded like that) that lead to better understanding of known processes or the discovery of new processes. If you read the primary literature, you’ll find that that is the tone of the discussion about the detection of the anomalies – people are intrigued and excited by what they might mean rather than fearful that they might destroy some cherished theory.

R. Sungenis: Yes, certain scientists are intrigued by what they might mean, like Max Tegmark, for example. He is at least open‐minded to their implications. But Palm and MacAndrew are not open‐minded. They write scathing papers and ridicule geocentrists
in an effort to stop their contributions from coming to the discussion table. Why? Because they FEAR that the geocentrist interpretations may gain traction. They IGNORE the geocentric interpretations because they have secret grudges against the holders and don’t want their fallacious worldviews exposed.

Palm: Sungenis, DeLano and their friends are very good at sitting on the side‐lines and throwing bricks at the scientific community but they haven’t felt the need to create a model of their own.

R. Sungenis: First, the “bricks” we throw were given to us by the “scientific community,” as even MacAndrew admitted earlier. Go back and read the quotes we displayed above. It’s all there, and over many years.

Second, the conclusions we make were given to us by the “scientific community.” The only difference between us and them is that we corral the evidence and shine a bright light on it, and show that it agrees completely with the Church’s tradition and its condemnation of Galileo. THAT is what MacAndrew doesn’t like.

Palm: They spend much of their energy impotently opposing one or other of these concepts (quite often using one, which they deny, as an argument against another, which they are trying to deny – consistency is not their strong suit) but very little energy, indeed none at all, in developing a model that is cosmologically and astronomically valid and self‐consistent, and which supports their assertions. Such a model should explain all of the huge quantity of observations of the cosmos . . . They would need to do all this with a model that is self‐consistent (so it must have no major internal inconsistencies and contradictions), quantified (so it would have to be mathematically based) and provide at least the same, and preferably better, quantifiable predictions as the model it replaces . . . That’s a tall order for a handful of people who mostly have neither physics education nor mathematical skill. After all, the Standard Model has been developed by tens of thousands of professionals over more than a hundred years. You might accuse me of being unfair and you’d be right. We shouldn’t expect them to be able to do this. But on the other hand, if they can’t even set out the bare‐bones framework of such a model that doesn’t fall at the first empirical hurdle, and which has at least the potential to meet the criteria above, how do they know that the standard model that they are opposed to is as wrong as they say it is?

R. Sungenis: We DO have a model. All one need do is read Galileo Was Wrong, volumes 1 and 2. Of course, neither Palm nor MacAndrew have done so, and thus they conclude we DON’T have a model.

Palm: So, let’s narrow down our challenge somewhat. Let’s ask a specific question about the CMB anomalies that the geocentrists should be able to answer if they are in a position to support their claims with evidence and logic. How precisely do the anomalies of the CMB support the geocentric argument? It’s not good enough to point to current
unexplained observations, and from there to jump with a hand‐wave to whatever conclusion they want. “Scientists don’t currently know why the quadrupole and the octopole align approximately with each other and on the dipole and ecliptic therefore the Earth is at the centre of the Universe” is not a compelling argument, but it is basically the argument that they are making. ““Scientists don’t currently know why the quadrupole and the octopole align approximately with each other and on the dipole and ecliptic therefore the Earth is at a privileged or special place” isn’t any better. Read Dr. MacAndrew's complete article, "The CMB and Geocentrism"; by Dr. Alec MacAndrew (20 October 2014)

R. Sungenis: I suggest that MacAndrew read the quotes we have amassed from the
leading experts on the CMB. THEY are the ones telling us that the CMB dipole is aligned
with the Earth’s equinoxes (the equator) and the quadrupole and octupole is aligned
with the Sun‐Earth ecliptic. There is now also literature saying that the CMB dipole
cannot be conveniently attributed to our presumed “motion through space” but must,
rather, be an intrinsic anisotropy. What more does MacAndrew need to know? The
problem is that MacAndrew doesn’t want to accept the clear evidence. And if he doesn’t
accept the clear evidence, we would be wasting our time giving him more detailed
evidence?

Conversely, if the scientific literature stated that the CMB dipole and quadrupole were
NOT aligned with the Earth’s equator and ecliptic, who do you think would be the first
people to tout that evidence as being AGAINST geocentrism? You’re right – Alec
MacAndrew and David Palm.

Maybe they can find such a non‐alignment with the Earth in one of the Multiverses that
is being touted as the answer to geocentrism these days! I’m sure Michio Kaku can help
you there!

October 21, 2014

Part 2 to follow


Footnotes

1 Andre K. T. Assis, Relational Mechanics, pp. 189-190. 
2 See Galileo Was Wrong, 10th edition, pp. 304-306 for more information.
3 George F. R. Ellis, “Is the Universe Expanding?” General Relativity and Gravitation, vol. 9, no. 2, 1978, p. 92, emphasis added. Ellis proceeds to argue: “...where would one be likely to find life like that we know on Earth? The answer must be, where conditions are favorable for life of this kind; but in the model we are considering, the conditions for life would be most favorable near the center, where the universe is cool.” See also: G. F. R. Ellis, R. Maartens and S. Nel, “Is the Universe Expanding – But Maybe We’re Near Its Center?” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 154:187-195, 1978.
4 “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No. 4, p. 55.
5 Paul C. W. Davies, “Cosmic Heresy?” Nature, 273:336, 1978, emphasis added.
6 “Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky,” Ashok K. Singal, Astronomy and Astrophysics Division, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India, May 17, 2103, arXiv:1305.4134v1. Signal states: “We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations.”
7 Ibid., pp. 1-2.
8 “Large-angle anomalies in the CMB,” Craig J. Copi, D. Huterer, D. Schwarz, and G. Starkman, Nov. 12, 2010, arXiv:1004.5602v2. 9 “The Oddly Quiet Universe: How the CMB Challenges Cosmology’s Standard Model,” Glenn D. Starkman, Craig J. Copi, Dragan Huterer, Dominik Schwarz, January 12, 2012, acXiv:1201.2459v1.
10 “No large-angle correlations on the non-Galactic microwave sky,” Craig J. Copi, Dragan Huterer, Domink Schwarz, and Glenn Starkman, MNRAS, 2008, republished August 13, 2013, arXiv: 0808.3767v2, p. 2.
11 Gerard de Vaucouleurs, “The Case for a Hierarchial Cosmology,” Science, v. 167, No. 3922, 1970, pp. 1203-1204.
12 Gerard de Vaucouleurs, “The Case for a Hierarchial Cosmology,” Science, vol. 167, No. 3922, 1970, p. 1204.
13 Dominik J. Schwarz, Glenn D. Starkman, Dragan Huterer and Craig J. Copi, “Is the Low-l Microwave Background Cosmic?” Physical Review Letters, November 26, 2004, pp. 221301-1 to 4. The same phenomenon is reiterated in their 2005 paper, “On large scale anomalies of the microwave sky,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society; and their 2010 paper, “Large-angle anomalies in the CMB,” and begin it with an obvious reaffirmation that all data will be interpreted through the grid of the “Copernican Principle...that the Earth does not occupy a special place in the universe...” (p. 1), but at the same time admit: “These apparent correlations with the solar system geometry are puzzling and currently unexplained...the quadrupole and octopole are orthogonal to the ecliptic at the 95.9% CL [confidence level]...a systematic that is indeed correlated with the ecliptic plane...the normals to these four planes are aligned with the direction of the cosmological dipole (and with the equinoxes) at a level inconsistent with Gaussian random, statistically isotropic skies at 99% CL” (p. 5).
14 “On the large-angle anomalies of the microwave sky,” C. J. Copi (1), D. Huterer (2), D. J. Schwarz (3), G. D. Starkman (1) ((1) Case Western Reserve University, (2) University of Chicago, (3) Universitat Bielefeld) (Submitted on 1 Aug 2005) http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508047
15 “Large-angle anomalies in the CMB,” Craig J. Copi, D. Huterer, D. Schwarz, and G. Starkman, Nov. 12, 2010, arXiv:1004.5602v2. 
16 Ibid., p. 52. 
17 “The Energy of Empty Space is not Zero. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture /krauss06/krauss06.2 _index.html

18 Ibid., p. 43. See also Scientific American, December 9, 2011 article titled “Universal Alignment: Could the Cosmos Have a Point” by Michael Moyer, which makes reference to Huterer’s findings, stating: “The universe has no center and no edge, no special regions ticked in among the galaxies and light. No matter where you look, it’s the same – or so physicists thought...hot and cold spots speckle the sky....Cosmologists have called it the ‘axis of evil.’” Likewise, Federico Urban and Ariel Zhitnitsky state 
“Similarly, one can employ different vectorial and tensorial decompositions of the multipoles to see that there is a very easily identifiable preferred axis, the cosmological dipole once again; that is, the normal vectors to the planes determined by the quadrupole and the octupole (there are four of them) point all in the same direction, that of the ecliptic and equinox” “The P-Odd Universe,” University of British Columbia, July 13, 2011, p. 2.











19 “Axis of Evil Warps Cosmic Background,” Marcus Chown, New Scientist, October 22, 2005, pp. 19ff, emphasis in original.


20 “Did the big bang really happen,” M. Chown, New Scientist, July 2, 2005, p. 6.


21 Ibid., pp. 1-3. Chown adds: “Last year they wrote an open letter warning that failure to fund research into big bang alternatives was suppressing free debate in the field of cosmology (New Scientist, 22 May 2004, p 20).”
22 December 20, 2012, at arXiv:1212.5225v1.

23 Ibid., p. 70.
24 Ibid., 72. 
25 Page 132: “This portion of the template-corrected sky is strongly dominated by CMB anisotropy....Having addressed the quadrupole value, the quadrupole-octupole alignment, and the general goodness-of-fit, we find no convincing evidence of CMB anomalies beyond the normal statistical ranges that should be anticipated to occur in a rich dataset.”
26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation. Another source has the Earth moving toward Virgo: “After the dipole anisotropy, which is due to the Doppler shift of the microwave background radiation due to our peculiar velocity relative to the co-moving cosmic rest frame, has been subtracted out. This feature is consistent with the Earth moving at some 627 km/s towards the constellation Virgo” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot). The discrepancy of using Virgo as opposed to Leo is that the two constellations are next to each other in the Zodiac, and the dipole axis is between them, although closer to Leo. The 371km/s is the net speed of the sun minus any galactic movement toward Leo.
 27 John P. Ralston, “Question Isotropy,” Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Kansas, Nov. 2010, pp. 4-5. Ralston adds: “All are again well-aligned with the axis of Virgo. A subsequent study in 2008 diluted by higher values of l does not change this conclusion. And so if there is a local effect or bias producing the (many) alignments, it affects much of the actual power in the CMB, which then would not be ‘pristine’” and concluding with “our studies find there is nothing supporting isotropy of the CMB, and everything about the data contradicting it.”
28 Graph taken from Kate Land’s seminar at: http://www.cita.utoronto. ca/TALKS/Land-Nov23.pdf 
29 “Dipole anisotropy in flux density and source count distribution in radio NVSS data,” R. Kothari, A. Naskar, P. Tiwari, S Nadkarni-Ghosh and P. Jain, July 8, 2013, Dept. of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, at arXiv:1307.1947v1. The concluding sentence of the paper states: “Finally, assuming the presence of an intrinsic dipole contribution in the source counts, we separate it out from the kinematic dipole. The resulting speed of the solar system, however, is still found to be higher than the CMBR expectation. Our results support the hypothesis that the Universe is intrinsically anisotropic with the anisotropy axis pointing towards Virgo” p. 10. Ralston may have made the same point when he says, “However the alignment of the quadrupole and octupole happens to be right along the dipole, and point along Virgo. Some use this as a reason to dismiss the quadrupole and octupole, while retaining the rest of the CMB as ‘pristine,’” but he made a mistake in saying that the quadrupole/octupole “point along Virgo” (since it is obvious that the quad- and octupole axis is perpendicular to the dipole axis).

























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