WMAP - Second Release Options

[antoniseb]

Some discussion of the yet to be released WMAP Second Data Release has been going on elsewhere on this forum. I've created this thread as a better labelled place for such discussion.

I have been writing that the second release is overdue, and that there are some hints that there are unexpected things that have contaminated the first release data. Others have pointed out that the data is not clear and needs a lot of time to resolve.

[antoniseb]

So where is the WMAP second release?
It has been a very long time now.
I've been hearing that there is a scandal brewing and everyone involved is sworn to secrecy. This is very strange for big budget public science projects.

As it is, the Planck mission will launch in a year and a half, and start returning more accurate data than WMAP a year or so after that. We might not see the WMAP data before it is obsolete. I would really like to know what the problem is, and why they can't just publish something about what the trouble is.

[tfisher]

Maybe we can guess something about the issue based on the anomalous results from the WMAP first year data release. There was something funny about the low-order coefficients in a spherical harmonic expansion being other than expected for an infinite nearly flat universe. One cute explanation for this was that maybe the universe has a topology where it wraps around just past the point where we could see copies of ourselves in the distance, but that is an explanation miles away from meeting Occam's razor. The Occams razor explanation is that the WMAP team did something wrong trying to reduce foreground contributions to the microwave radiation. For the second year release, they probably want to fix what they did wrong, especially since they wanted to release polarization information which requires much tighter calibration constraints.

My guess is that the WMAP team simply hasn't figured out how to fix the calibration. What this means, I think, is they set their goals too high -- they should have had a goal of releasing less-well-processed data and let the community sort out the calibration mess.

[The Messenger]

My guess is that the WMAP team simply hasn't figured out how to fix the calibration.  What this means, I think, is they set their goals too high -- they should have had a goal of releasing less-well-processed data and let the community sort out the calibration mess.

I don't see how it can be fixed, unless and until a causal root is established for the appearence of local contamination.

WMAP CMB data reduction has always relied upon the assumption they can isolate galactic effects, and use a power law function to characterize the clarified primal signal. Local contamination, of any degree from any source, makes these necessary assumptions extremely iffy.

There are some simple aspects of the data which should have been released by now, regardless of data reduction concerns. For example, using the same data reduction techniques as the first year's release, is the data reproducible?

There are at least a dozen papers archived every week that to some degree rely upon WMAP first year data to reach their conclusions. The Planck mission is based upon the assumption WMAP can be improved upon, and many man hours are already committed to this program. At what point does withholding this data, especially if it cannot be reduced without sideways qualifications, become irresponsible?

Of coarse, if a1iens have duct-taped the WMAP team to specimen tables, the delay is excusable.