beyondmortality
Member
The CMB is a curiosity in itself. As I understand it, it is only actually uniform after corrections have been made for the presence of the Milky Way! So performing such a correction and then looking for residual ripples that are supposed to be meaningful, seems doubly crazy!
On top of that, observing radiation that follows the Rayleigh–Jeans law, seems a bit like observing something jittering that follows a Gaussian distribution (bell curve) - it could come from all sorts of causes.
My general feeling is that physics has to return to much more local concerns. Worrying about the origin/fate of the universe is just silly because the theories aren't settled and the data is pretty tenuous. I was interested in the fact that the astronomer Margaret Burbidge is supporting Halton Arp's view about red shifted quasars.
David
Ahh, a man of practical mind. I appreciate your distinction between curiosity and utility...indeed, there's nothing practical to be gained from answers to our questions of curiosity of how the universe came about and why it put us here. It doesn't change the course or outcome of life.