A velocity dipole in the distribution of radio galaxies

Chris Blake () and Jasper Wall
Additional contact information
Chris Blake: Astrophysics, Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Oxford
Jasper Wall: Astrophysics, Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Oxford

Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6877, 150-152

Abstract: Abstract The motion of our Galaxy through the Universe is reflected in a systematic shift in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background1—because of the Doppler effect, the temperature of the background is about 0.1 per cent higher in the direction of motion, with a correspondingly lower temperature in the opposite direction. This effect is known as dipole anisotropy. If our standard cosmological model is correct, a related dipole effect should also be present as an enhancement in the surface density of distant galaxies in the direction of motion2. The main obstacle to finding this signal is the uneven distribution of galaxies in the local supercluster, which drowns out the small cosmological signal. Here we report a detection of the expected cosmological dipole anisotropy in the distribution of galaxies. We use a survey of radio galaxies that are mainly located at cosmological distances, so the contamination from nearby clusters is small. When local radio galaxies are removed from the sample, the resulting dipole is in the same direction as the temperature anisotropy of the microwave background, and close to the expected amplitude. The result therefore confirms the standard cosmological interpretation of the microwave background.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/416150a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6877:d:10.1038_416150a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/416150a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().