Paper detail

CCC-predicted low-variance circles in CMB sky and LCDM

New analysis confirms our earlier claim [1], [7] of circles of notably low temperature variance, often in concentric sets, in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), discernable in WMAP data. Their reality can be interpreted as evidence of supermassive black-hole encounters in a previous aeon, as predicted by conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) [2]. Counter arguments [4-6] pointed out that such circles arise, at similar frequency, also in simulated data using WMAP's CMB power spectrum, plus random input. We responded [7] that if such circles contribute to CMB, this influences the power spectrum, enhancing such circles in simulations. We confirm this here, but show that if the theoretical LCDM power spectrum is used instead, then the low-variance circles disappear. This is evidence that the LCDM model gives an incomplete explanation of the CMB, missing crucial information, which is provided by incorporating low-variance circles of CCC. The excellent agreement between theoretical LCDM and observed power spectrum, even for fairly large l-values, does not reveal this discrepancy, of relevance only at larger l-values where agreement is weak. We point out various non-random aspects of the circles, seen both in the true data and in simulations with WMAP power spectrum, but not with the theoretical LCDM spectrum. We also show the spatial distribution of concentric circle sets to be very non-random in the true WMAP data (perhaps owing to large-scale mass inhomogeneities distorting CCC's circle shapes), in complete contrast with simulations with WMAP power spectrum, where such circle sets are much sparser and closer to average temperature. These features are fully consistent with CCC (and with an earlier analysis [8] that the random Gaussian component in the CMB is only around 0.2 in the total CMB signal) but do not readily fit in with the random initial fluctuations of standard inflation.