Comments on: Hubble Weighs In: CSL-1 Not a Cosmic String

By: Thoughts on science and life » Blog Archive » CSL-1: The End of Cosmic Strings?

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:19:30 +0000

[...] The CLS-1 has also been discussed by Lubos Motl, by Peter Woit (as mentioned above) and at Cosmic Variance. [...]

By: Lubos Motl

Lubos Motl — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:08:37 +0000

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

By: amanda

amanda — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:10:06 +0000

“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……

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:27:57 +0000

Hi Lubos,

I thought that you didn’t like Bayesian reasoning.

By: Slacrates

Slacrates — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:06:43 +0000

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.

By: Not Even Wrong » Blog Archive » The First Evidence For String Theory? Not.

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 22:05:51 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: Lubos Motl

Lubos Motl — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 21:10:49 +0000

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.

By: Dissident

Dissident — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:54:21 +0000

#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!”…

By: Lubos Motl

Lubos Motl — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:49:15 +0000

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

By: Peter Woit's Bastard Child

Peter Woit's Bastard Child — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:41:46 +0000

Did anyone really think in his or her heart that this was a cosmic string? Honestly? Come on.

By: Plato

Plato — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:29:07 +0000

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?

By: thomas

thomas — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:27:57 +0000

thanks for this one! I just told some students this morning about this case, but now I can tell them otherwise tomorrow

By: Lubos Motl

Lubos Motl — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:20:14 +0000

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.

By: Dissident

Dissident — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:38:59 +0000

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.

By: Chaz

Chaz — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:24:13 +0000

\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}

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:22:18 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:17:29 +0000

I don’t know, although there might be something simple as you say.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:03:39 +0000

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?