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:
“Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piecemeal
of a sort of emotional anemia.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)