The above top two images are pictures of cosmic background radiation, one provided the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the second from top, a more recent image, is from the Planck probe in even higher resolution. WMAP and Planck were small spacecraft equipped with microwave telescopes, or receivers, sent out into deep space by NASA and the European Space agency respectively. The bottom two images show how the visual field is construed from two overlapping monocular fields (‘Visual Field’, n.d.), and a representation of my subjective visual field as I watch a detail from Van Gogh's Starry Night, complete with the occluding nose(s).

 

Recently, over the past 10 years, increasing evidence has been found that there are a number of anomalies in the cosmic background radiation that deviate, in structured ways, from a random (Gaussianly) distributed universe (see Trosper, 2014, for an excellent layman's introduction).

 

The universe appears to have a preferred alignment with which even our solar system conforms (Huterer, 2007). Groeneboom and Eriksen's (2009; see also Carroll, n.d.) analysis of the US WMAP data found two poles (shown as red dots in the image second from top).

 

More recent analyses of WMAP and Planck space probe data have found an jokily named "axis of evil" (Land & Magueijo, 2005; Aron, Jacob, 2013) which is shown in the second image above as a white line through the cosmic background radiation data. On each side of this axis there are statistically significant asymmetries in overall temperature (Yoho, Copi, Starkman, & Kosowsky, 2014), quasar light polarisation (Hutsemekers, 2014, slide 53-56), and right/left galaxy spin (Longo, 2007, 2008) prompting the latter author to suggest that the universe has a "handedness" about this "axis".

 

Since the WMAP and Planck probe data correspond with each other, even though collected from difference coordinates in different ways, it is unlikely that this is some "foreground" distortion produced by the measurement apparatus, or local interference such as the effect of our sun. This article will argue that the previous research has not considered the "foreground" at close-quarters enough.

 

These anomalies have seriously challenged the way that physicists see the universe, prompting one team to ask "Is everything we know about the universe wrong?" (Sawangwit & Shanks, 2010).

 

(Skip this bit till the line of asterisks ********** if you have read my other posts on this topic )

 

As already discussed, Ernst Mach, as well as Buddhist philosophers and Aristotle, have hypothesised that the stuff of the universe is our sensations (mind, soul) and specifically our visual field (Mach, 1897). According to this view, "things", "matter", "galaxies", "particles" are the theories and hypotheses that we have to explain sensations.

 

After reading Mach's phenomenalism, and the closely related Humian empiricism, Einstein postulated his theory of special relativity and the principle of invariant light speed (see Norton, 2010). As a consequence, there is a prohibition of motion faster than light. That the speed limit of the whole universe just so happens to be that of the fastest sense of recently evolved carbon based life form called "humans" on a cosmic speck called "the Earth" is no coincidence. This fortuitousness - which would otherwise be preposterous -- can easily be explained from a Machian holistic perspective (Takemoto, 2014). If the stuff of the universe is our sensations, then it is a tautology that nothing can go faster than the speed of our fastest sensation, light. As an interpretation of our visual field, the universe is of course made of this "light". Phenomenalist, empiricist reasoning of this type be used to explain other properties of the universe.

 

Particularly, (as discussed here) recent advances in string theory have suggests that the universe is flat, or "holographic," (Susskind, 1995) again, as is our visual field. The hypothesis that we live in a holograph is now being tested by the Fermi lab (Hogan, 2013) and the results are expected soon, but the fact that the universe is within 0.4% of flat has already by demonstrated by the WMAP CBR data (NASA/WMAP Science Team, 2012). If the universe is genuinely flat and three dimensionality an "emergent property" then for me this can not be explained in any non-Machian way: a flat "holographic universe" can only be an interpretation of our, human sensations. But there is still more evidence.

 

Still more recent research to explain the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation data suggest that one way of of explaining some of the anomalies is to conclude that the universe is not spherical but ellipsoidal (Campanelli, Cea, Fogli, & Tedesco, 2011; Cea, 2014, see my earlier post). This theory does not seem to have caught on because physicists -- still convinced of a "The Matrix"-like, Kantian 'real world' out there, behind appearances, I presume -- can see no explanation as to why the universe should be elliptical. NASA astrophysicist Gary Hinshaw is quoted as saying, "It is actually difficult to understand how an ellipsoidal model would arise 'naturally' in cosmology, so the burden switches from explaining a very mild 'anomaly' to explaining a fundamentally new feature of our universe,"(Choi, Charles, Q, 2006).

 

*******************************************************************************

If the "universe" is our interpretation of our sensations and in particular the visual field, that vast ellipse of light that we find before (or engulfing) us, then it seems appropriate that the theory and data regarding the universe should conform to the subjective experience shown in the bottom image. Van Gogh's swirls suggest that he may have been able to see asymmetries in his visual perception. I am subjectively unaware of them, but research on visual perception demonstrates that such asymmetries exist.

 

I suggest therefore, that the anomalies in the cosmic background radiation data may be explained by consideration of asymmetries of the human visual field and visual cortex. Our visual field is formed from the unification of two roughly circular monocular two dimensional fields which means that is approximately elliptical.

 

Furthermore, it has been known for some time to psychologists and neuroscientists that there the visual field has horizontal and vertical asymmetric properties. For example there is left-right asymmetry in the processing of local and global visual information. Navon figures such as that below

 

T

T

T

T

T T T T

 

are processed faster globally (as in this case an L) in the left visual field and processed faster locally (as in the above case as a T) in the right visual field (Yovel, Yovel, & Levy, 2001; McKone et al., 2010).

 

This asymmetry in local and global processing parallels asymmetries in low versus high visuo-spatial frequency. "Spatial frequency refers to the number of dark-light cycles per unit of space - the more cycles per unit of space, the higher the spatial frequency (Hellige, 1996, p487)."

 

There are also differences in visual processing between the upper and lower parts of the human visual field (Genzano, Di Nocera, & Ferlazzo, 2001).

 

These vertical asymmetries sometimes match those found in the left-right asymmetry (e.g. Christman, 1993) where recognition of local features (the Ts in the above) of Navon figures is better in the upper left visual hemifields, than in the lower right.

 

In a different type of discrimination task Berardi & Fiorentini, (1991) found the opposite difference in ability but the same morphology. They write "The data shown in Fig. 1, A and B, confirm the previously observed asymmetry between the left and the right visual hemified, probably reflecting hemispheric specialization (Fiorentini & Berardi, 1984). A superiority of the lower hemifield with respect to the upper hemifield was also observed in the present discrimination task."

 

This and other results finding visual processing differences separated along an axis including the left and lower, as opposed to the right and upper quadrants of the visual field, presents a pattern of processing ability in the shape of a rotated 'S' axis or Taoism symbol similar to an inverted form of the CBR "axis of evil," where the left side is extended across the top, and the right side extended across the bottom. In other words, the Taoism symbol morphology appears to be shared by both the cosmos and human visual field/cortex. I argue that the morphological similarities between the visual field and the universe are in all cases, no coincidence. These asymmetries of the visual field may explain the different "temperature" of the hot and cool "lobes of the universe" (Huterer, 2007) on either side of the CBR "axis of evil."

 

I am probably imagining the similarity between the asymmetry of the laminar distribution in the human visual cortex (Eickhoff, Rottschy, Kujovic, Palomero-Gallagher, & Zilles, 2008) and the asymmetry of the WMAP and Planck CBR power spectrum (see Bennett et al., 2013, pp 37-38 and Francis, 2013 respectively), but the point of this article is that both are asymmetrical, have a similar morphology, and this is predicted by a phenomenalist, empiricist or holistic interpretation of both, really the same, sets of data (Takemoto, 2014). I don't seriously entertain this notion but perhaps the "cold spots" occluded by "supervoids" (Szapudi et al., others, 2015) found in the CBR map of the universe, might correspond to the blind spots in our visual field.

 

In other research on visual field asymmetries in mental rotation abilities, (Burton, Wagner, Lim, and Levy (1992) found that clockwise mental rotations are performed faster in the left visual field were counterclockwise rotations are performed faster in the right visual field. These visual processing asymmetries parallel the galaxy rotation asymmetries found by Longo (2007, 2008).

 

Finally to test this hypothesis I attempt to find a novel feature of the cosmic background data, predicted by research on the visual field. One of the most cited evolutionarily sound asymmetries in visual field processing, and the reason perhaps why bifocal glasses are so easy to adapt to, is that proposed by Previc (1990): the upper visual field is more adept at processing distant stimuli than the lower visual field. Is there a similar phenomena is present in the cosmic background data? I was initially unaware of any such parallel.

 

It would seem that the answer is very possibly yes. An anomalous "dark flow" (Kashlinsky, Atrio-Barandela, Kocevski, & Ebeling, 2009) of galaxies away from us into the distance. This happens to occur, fortuitously or not, in the upper half of diagrams of the cosmic background radiation. Some cosmologists are arguing that dark flow suggests the presents of another universe sucking galaxies into the distance. Others have argued that the movement suggests that the universe is at a tilt (Atrio-Barandela, Kashlinsky, Ebeling, Kocevski, & Edge, 2012). If part, and in some sense the "upper part" of the universe were to found to be tilted away then this might correspond to the way in which the visual field is titled in its specialization toward foreground and distant visual processing. The dark flow anomaly remains controversial but one of the main proponents Dr. Kashlinsky is quoted as saying "This flow suggested that the universe had somehow become lopsided, as if space-time itself was behaving like a tilted table and matter was sliding off" (Maggine, McKee, 2013). I rest my case.

 

Conclusion

In any event, as science finds more similarities between experience and the universe as a whole, we shall perhaps be persuaded that the distant stars are, in a sense, not so distant at all. I am not of course suggesting that will suddenly be able to touch the stars. But to be realistic, there should be a reversal in our understanding of the nature of the universe. Sensations are often thought of as data to help us understand the rational scientific universe "out there" (e.g. Jackson, 1986) . It is really rather the case that, as Mach (1897) and Hume (1739) argued, that the rational scientific universe is a matrix of information and hypotheses, blather not matter, that serves to facilitate our understand our sensations, the stuff, the being of the universe.

  

Afterword

As always, I end by asking, what keeps the the stars out there? What separates us from the world? I suggest it is because we think we have someone with us as we watch our sensations, the stars. This convinces us that the Kantian 'thing it itself' is more than a hypothesis, more than a kind of simulation or role playing game .

 

This suggestion may seem a very depressing solipsism each being trapped inside our own private black hole. But it could also be argued, on the contrary, that the unreal "spirit of gravity" (Nietzsche, 2006) with whom I pretend to converse, prevents me from realising that universe of which I am a part, is itself part of the multiverse (Good, 1972), and that we are connected. In the words of Terrence Mallick, (Malick, 1999) we each stand in the others light.

 

Image second from bottom

www.vision-and-eye-health.com/visual-field.html

Should you wish that I cease and desist please be so kind as to comment below or contact me via the email link at nihonbunka.com

 

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