Related papers: The WMAP cold spot
The report of a significant deviation of the CMB temperature anisotropies distribution from Gaussianity (soon after the public release of the WMAP data in 2003) has become one of the most solid WMAP anomalies. This detection grounds on an…
The non-Gaussian cold spot detected in wavelet space in the WMAP 1-year data, is detected again in the coadded WMAP 3-year data at the same position (b = -57, l = 209) and size in the sky (around 10 degrees). The present analysis is based…
An extremely cold and big spot in the WMAP 1-year data is analyzed. Our work is a continuation of a previous paper (Vielva et al. 2004) where non-Gaussianity was detected, with a method based on the Spherical Mexican Hat Wavelet (SMHW)…
We investigate the local properties of WMAP Cold Spot (CS) by defining the local statistics: mean temperature, variance, skewness and kurtosis. We find that, compared with the \emph{coldest spots} in random Gaussian simulations, WMAP CS…
The non--Gaussian cold spot in the 1-year WMAP data, described in Vielva et al. and Cruz et al., is analysed in detail in the present paper. First of all, we perform a more rigorous calculation of the significance of the non-zero kurtosis…
We reassess the evidence that WMAP temperature maps contain a statistically significant "cold spot" by repeating the analysis using simple circular top-hat (disk) weights, as well as Gaussian weights of varying width. Contrary to previous…
Cosmologists have suggested a number of intriguing hypotheses for the origin of the "WMAP cold spot", the coldest extended region seen in the CMB sky, including a very large void and a collapsing texture. Either hypothesis predicts a…
We detect a dip of 20-45% in the surface brightness and number counts of NVSS sources smoothed to a few degrees at the location of the WMAP cold spot. The dip has structure on scales of approximately 1-10 degrees. Together with independent…
The non-Gaussian cold spot found in the WMAP data has created controversy about its origin. Here we calculate the Bayesian posterior probability ratios for three different models that could explain the cold spot. A recent work claimed that…
We investigate claims of excess ellipticity of hot and cold spots in the WMAP data (Gurzadyan et al. 2005, 2007). Using the cosmic microwave background data from 7 years of observations by the WMAP satellite, we find, contrary to previous…
We present an extensive frequentist analysis of the one-point statistics (number, mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis) and two-point correlation functions determined for the local extrema of the cosmic microwave background temperature…
The first and third year data releases from the WMAP provide evidence of an anomalous Cold Spot (CS) at galactic latitude b=-57deg and longitude l=209deg. We have examined the properties of the CS in some detail in order to assess its…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are thought to be statistically isotropic and Gaussian. However, several anomalies are observed, including the CMB Cold Spot, an unexpected cold $\sim 10^{\circ}$ region with $p$-value…
Recent results of the ESA Planck satellite have confirmed the existence of some anomalies in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. One of the most intriguing anomalies is the Cold Spot, firstly…
In a concordant $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model, large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy due to linear perturbations in the local universe is not negligible. We explore a possible role of an…
One of the most interesting explanations for the non-Gaussian Cold Spot (CS) detected in the WMAP data by Vielva et al. 2004, is that it arises from the interaction of the CMB radiation with a cosmic texture (Cruz et al. 2007b). In this…
This paper presents a frequentist analysis of the hot and cold spots of the cosmic microwave background data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). We compare the WMAP temperature statistics of extrema (number of…
The anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background known as the "Cold Spot" could be due to the existence of an anomalously large spherical (few hundreds Mpc/h radius) underdense region, called a "Void" for short. Such a structure would have an…
We investigate the abundance of large-scale hot and cold spots in the WMAP-5 temperature maps and find considerable discrepancies compared to Gaussian simulations based on the LCDM best-fit model. Too few spots are present in the reliably…
Several intriguing phenomena, unlikely within the standard inflationary cosmology, were reported in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from WMAP and appear to be uncorrelated. Two of these phenomena, termed CMB anomalies, are…