There has been some excitement in the cosmology and string theory communities recently regarding the observation of a pair of images (optimistically named CSL-1), with characteristics and separation such that they are candidates to arise from a single object lensed by a cosmic string. If this interpretation held up it would have deep and far ranging implications for our understanding of fundamental physical laws, implying either a field theory phase transition at high energies or that it is possible for some superstrings from the early universe to remain macroscopic.
The only way to get a real check of the status of CSL-1 was to get a good look at it with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and my postdoc Levon Pogosian just forwarded an email to me, informing him that the HST observations of CSL-1 are now in and that it is not a cosmic string, but rather merely a pair of interacting elliptical galaxies sitting in a rather faint cluster.
Here’s what I think is the HST image
Oh well, I imagine the search will continue.
January 12th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Excellent; science marches on. Am I supposed to be able to tell that it’s not a lensing string just from the image? I guess the galaxies don’t look exactly the same shape. Or is spectral information involved?
January 12th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I don’t know, although there might be something simple as you say.
January 12th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
It’s entirely morphological. The galaxies have different shapes and orientations Moreover, the orientation of the lower galaxy and the slight extension in the faint light to the upper left of the upper galaxy are suggestive of an interaction.
January 12th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
\begin{HEARSAY}
The shape gives it away – they don’t form a mirror image (probably more obvious to a computer than to people). Though apparently, the spectra are identical!!
\end{HEARSAY}
January 12th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
To me that looks like a picture of a cell splitting… but assuming it is what you guys say it is, couldn’t the difference in shape be accounted for by the cosmic string being at an angle to our line of sight? Just an idle thought, please kill it before I develop a compulsion to do the math.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
If there were a string, you would simply have to see a discontinuity of the picture along the string. And yes, the shapes would have to be more similar.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
thanks for this one! I just told some students this morning about this case, but now I can tell them otherwise tomorrow
January 12th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
As a Stringevangelist my world is coming apart?
Andrey Kravstov provides for interesting views of early universe formation. Am I to take it then, that this area might be in trouble?
Just some additonal prep information given here.
Maybe you could expand a bit on what your saying Lubos?
January 12th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Did anyone really think in his or her heart that this was a cosmic string? Honestly? Come on.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
If you want to see the picture from the Korean Space Telescope Hwang Woo-Suk that proves that there is a cosmic string
, see the bottom of
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/01/csl-1-is-not-cosmic-string.html
January 12th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
#10: Ahem, not to spoil your fun or anything Lubos, but what I see at the bottom of that page is a Google ad for “The Final Theory”, claiming to be “The bestselling book our scientists hope you never read” and an invitation to “Find out why!”…
January 12th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Joe was saying that the probability it was a cosmic string – or similar accessible incident would reveal a cosmic string – was around 10%. I still agree that there was a significant enough chance.
Dear Dissident, when I said “bottom”, I did not mean a complete bottom.
January 12th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
[...] The New Scientist story was about an astronomical object optimistically given the name “CSL-1″ (for Capodimonte-Sternberg-Lens candidate), that supposedly might be a galaxy lensed by a cosmic string, causing it to appear doubled. Of course the much less exotic and much more likely possibility was always that it was just two similar looking neighboring galaxies. Recently the Hubble space telescope was used to take a closer look at CSL-1, and as reported here and here the Hubble image clearly shows that it’s not a cosmic string, just two nearby galaxies. [...]
January 12th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Imagine the comments at ‘Not Even Wrong’ if it turned out to be a probable cosmic string. Richard Hoagland would add it to his repetoire of conspiracies.
January 12th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Hi Lubos,
I thought that you didn’t like Bayesian reasoning.
January 13th, 2006 at 7:10 am
“Did anyone really think in his or her heart that this was a cosmic string? Honestly? Come on.”
I put this question to a few people. The answers were depressingly similar. They were all variants on, “No, I didn’t, because I no longer expect anything to work these days.” An extension of the attitude most people have to everything on hep-th these days……
January 13th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Dear Count Iblis,
I still don’t like it. Moreover, we have a new argument against it. The correct figure for the probability that CSL-1 was a cosmic string lensing was 0%.
Best
LM
January 17th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
[...] The CLS-1 has also been discussed by Lubos Motl, by Peter Woit (as mentioned above) and at Cosmic Variance. [...]