Re: Smoot's Book: Quadrupoles and Omega=1

From: Patrick Powers (frisbieinstein_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 17:06:41 +0000 (UTC)

ebunn@lfa221051.richmond.edu wrote in message news:<cofhoo$s6u$1@lfa222122.richmond.edu>...
> In article <9511688f.0411252242.7ce07f51@posting.google.com>,
> Patrick Powers <frisbieinstein@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >ebunn@lfa221051.richmond.edu wrote in message news:<cn377g$ev1$1@lfa222122.richmond.edu>...
>
> >> The quadrupole is just a particular "pattern" in a temperature map (or
> >> any other function on the sphere). One sort of quadrupole is a
> >> pattern that's cold at the north and south poles and hot in the
> >> middle. That's what emission from our own Galaxy looks like. Since
> >> we live in a spiral galaxy with a disk, there's a lot of glowing stuff
> >> near the Galactic equator and not much near the Galactic poles.
> >>
> >
> >OK. So how about that cosmic quadrupole?
>
> How about it?
>
> The cosmic quadrupole is there, but it's a few times lower in
> amplitude than is predicted in standard theories. It's hard to decide
> how to assign a statistical significance to this discrepancy, so no
> one knows whether or not to be worried about this.
>
> I don't know if this helps. Ask a question that's roughly a thousand
> times more specific, and I'll try to answer!
>
> -Ted

Why is there a cosmic quadrupole at all?

According to Smoot the cosmic quadrupole tends to cancel the galactic
quadrupole. Is that correct?