The Silk Scale and The Silk Mass
Diffusion damping exponentially decreases anisotropies in the CMB on a scale (the Silk scale) much smaller than a degree, or smaller than approximately 3 megaparsecs. This angular scale corresponds to a multipole moment . The mass contained within the Silk scale is the silk mass. Numerical evaluations of the Silk mass yield results on the order of solar masses at recombination and on the order of the mass of a present-day galaxy or galaxy cluster in the current era.
As diffusion damping works at this level, scientists say it affects small angles and corresponding anisotropies. This is to be contrasted with other effects which operate on a scale called intermediate or large . Searches for anisotropies on a small scale are not as difficult as those on larger scales, partly because they may employ ground-based telescopes and their results can be more easily predicted by current theoretical models.
Read more about this topic: Diffusion Damping, Effects
Famous quotes containing the words silk, scale and/or mass:
“Why silk is soft and the stone wounds
The child shall question all his days,
Why night-time rain and the breast’s blood
Both quench his thirst he’ll have a black reply.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“No man’s thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)