Sky maps without anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background are a better fit to WMAP's uncalibrated time-ordered data than the official sky maps

¹  Department of Physics and Medical Technology, VU University Medical Center - Postbus 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands, EU
²  Department of Physics and Astronomy University of British Columbia - Vancouver, BC, Canada

Corresponding author: Keith@kscover.ca

Received: 10 July 2009
Accepted: 7 September 2009

Abstract

The purpose of this reanalysis of the WMAP uncalibrated time-ordered data (TOD) is twofold. The first is to reassess the reliability of the detection of the anisotropies in the official WMAP sky maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The second is to assess the performance of a proposed criterion in avoiding systematic errors in detecting a signal of interest. The criterion is implemented by testing the null hypothesis that the uncalibrated TOD is consistent with no anisotropies when WMAP's hourly calibration parameters are allowed to vary. It is shown independently for all 20 WMAP channels that sky maps with no anisotropies are a better fit to the TOD than those from the official analysis. The recently launched Planck satellite should help sort out this perplexing result.