Sal Cordova and Aging Galaxies

[stcordova (Salvador Cordova)]

@PdotdQ

Secondly: You might say that Herouni’s claim, if true, means that the original Penzias-Wilson detection is fradulent. Not so, because the signal-to-noise of an antennae is

SNR=TsourceTsys√τΔν, \text{SNR} = \frac{T_{source}}{T_{sys}} \sqrt{\tau \Delta \nu} ; ,

where TsourceT_{source} is the source temperature, here ~2.7K for the CMB, TsysT_{sys} is the noise contribution, which is ~2.7K for Herouni’s antenna, τ\tau the integration time, or how long do you look at the source, and Δν\Delta \nu is the antenna bandwidth.

Antenna self-noise is not the only number that enters into the noise! For example, it doesn’t matter if your antenna noise is low if you didn’t bother to look at the sky for enough number of seconds.

When Herouni claimed that he cannot detect the CMB, what is his bandwidth? How long is his integration time? In fact, one can plug in Herouni’s number into the SNR equation and see that unless his bandwidth is very small, he should have been able to detect the CMB with the self-noise temperature that he reported.

Where did you find this paper? I must say, it looks very amateurish - neither the scientific analysis or composition is up to par with the average radio astronomy paper. Certainly doesn’t seem like the work of someone who has ~50 years of experience in the field.

Well here is the original Penzias and Wilson paper:

nph-iarticle_query

Which doesn’t give a lot of details either on how they arrived at a temperature by only measuring (what I believe is signal power) at 4.08 GHz (aka Mc/s). I saw nothing in any sort of materials and methods where they did the above calculations. Where is the antennae bandwidth stated, for example. How about the integration time? That would be reassuring, but it’s missing as far as I can tell.

One will argue Smoot and Mather and the NASA probes measured the black body spectrum accurately (like 1 part in 55 million for Mather), but now I’m become more skeptical about all this.

Sorry, especially after reading Penzias and Wilson’s paper that won them the Nobel Prize, the red flags are worse. Herouni’s measurments are at least on par, and there are researchers still affiliated with that antenna.