Related papers: The Large-Scale Smoothness of the Universe
The large scale distribution of galaxies in the universe displays a complex pattern of clusters, super-clusters, filaments and voids with sizes limited only by the boundaries of the available samples. A quantitative statistical…
We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-alpha forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…
Cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, i.e., the hypothesis that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. This implies in particular that the counts of galaxies should approach a homogeneous scaling with volume at…
Using the 2MASS Photometric Redshift catalogue we perform a number of statistical tests aimed at detecting possible departures from statistical homogeneity and isotropy in the large-scale structure of the Universe. Making use of the angular…
These lecture notes concentrate on a few specific topics concerning the distribution of galaxies on scales from 0.1 to nearly 1000/h Mpc. The main aim is to provide the students with the information and tools to familiarize with a few basic…
I critically discuss in a pedagogical and phenomenological way a few crucial tests challenging the claims by Pietronero and collaborators that there is no evidence from available galaxy catalogues that the Universe is actually homogeneous…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies probe the primordial density field at the edge of the observable Universe. There is a limiting precision (``cosmic variance'') with which anisotropies can determine the amplitude of primordial…
We review cosmological inference from optical and radio galaxy surveys, the X-Ray Background and the Cosmic Microwave Background. We focus on three topics: (i) First results from the 2dF galaxy redshift survey; (ii) Estimation of…
The properties of the galaxy distribution at large scales are usually studied using statistics which are assumed to be self-averaging inside a given sample. We present a new analysis able to quantitatively map galaxy large scale structures…
The combination of detections of anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation and observations of the large-scale distribution of galaxies probes the primordial density fluctuations of the universe on spatial scales varying by…
According to the cosmological principle, galaxy cluster sizes and cluster densities, when averaged over sufficiently large volumes of space, are expected to be constant everywhere, except for a slow variation with look-back time (redshift).…
Modern cosmological observations clearly reveal that the universe contains a hierarchy of clustering. However, recent surveys show a transition to homogeneity on large scales. The exact scale at which this transition occurs is still a topic…
We apply the scale-length method to several three dimensional samples of the Two degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. This method allows us to map in a quantitative and powerful way large scale structures in the distribution of galaxies…
We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…
Standard models of galaxy formation predict that matter distribution is statistically homogeneous and isotropic and characterized by (i) spatial homogeneity for r<10 Mpc/h, (ii) small-amplitude structures of relatively limited size (i.e.,…
The shape of the primordial fluctuation spectrum is probed by cosmic microwave background fluctuations which measure density fluctuations at z~1000 on scales of hundreds of Mpc and from galaxy redshift surveys, which measure structure at…
In this study, we probe the cosmic homogeneity with the BOSS CMASS galaxy sample in the redshift region of $0.43 < z < 0.7$. We use the normalised counts-in-spheres estimator $\mathcal{N}(<r)$ and the fractal correlation dimension…
The Cosmological Principle states that the Universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large scales. In particular, this implies statistical isotropy in the galaxy distribution, after removal of a dipole anisotropy due to the…
We discuss some of the basic implications of recent results on galaxy correlations published by the SDSS collaboration. In particular we focus on the evidence which has been recently presented for the scale and nature of the transition to…
The universe is nearly isotropic on very large scales. It is much more difficult to show that the universe is radially homogeneous (independent of distance), or equivalently, that it is isotropic about distant points. This taken as an…