Evidence for a Very Large-Scale Fractal Structure in the Universe from Cobe Measurements

Abstract

In this work, we analyse the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation observed by COBE and show that the distribution can be fitted by a fractal distribution with a fractal dimension $D=1.43\pm 0.07$. This value is in close agreement with the fractal dimension obtained by Coleman and Pietronero (1992) and Luo and Schramm (1992) from galaxy-galaxy and cluster-cluster correlations up to $\sim 100h^{-1}Mpc$. The fact that the observed temperature fluctuations correspond to scales much larger than $100h^{-1}Mpc$ and are signatures of the primordial density fluctuations at the recombination layer suggests that the structure of the matter at the early universe was already fractal and thus non-homogeneous on those scales. This result may have important consequences for the theoretical framework that describes the universe.

11 pages, postscript file, 2 figures available upon request. To appear in ApJ Letters

Cited by in corpus (9)

• The Data Big Bang and the Expanding Digital Universe: High-Dimensional, Complex and Massive Data Sets in an Inflationary Epoch
• Primordial fractal density perturbations and structure formation in the Universe: 1-Dimensional collisionless sheet model
• A measurement of the scale of homogeneity in the Early Universe
• Fractal Structure of Isothermal Lines and Loops on the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Effect of observational holes in fractal analysis of galaxy survey masks
• A model universe with variable dimension: Expansion as decrumpling
• The roughness of the last scattering surface
• Dynamics of Dimensions in Factor Space Cosmology
• On the Numerical Study of the Complexity and Fractal Dimension of CMB Anisotropies