Copernican Principle - Ecliptic Alignment of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy

Ecliptic Alignment of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy

Results from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) appear to run counter to Copernican expectations. The motion of the solar system, and the orientation of the plane of the are aligned with features of the microwave sky, which on conventional thinking are caused by structure at the edge of the observable universe

Lawrence Krauss is quoted as follows in the referenced Edge.org article:

But when you look at map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.

It would be somewhat surprising if the WMAP alignments were a complete coincidence, but the anti-Copernican implications suggested by Krauss would be far more surprising, if true. Other possibilities are (i) that residual instrumental errors in WMAP cause the effect (ii) that unexpected microwave emission from within the solar system is contaminating the maps.