## [astro-ph/0409655] Reconciling the observed all-sky CMB flux with its expected value from an inhomogeneous Universe

 Authors: Richard Lieu Abstract: In the expanding near Universe where $\approx$ 50 % of the matter is clumped into galaxies and their halos, it was known from an earlier work that the angular magnification of a large CMB emission feature depends on the statistical balance between light beam convergence by clumps and divergence within the voids for the majority of the sightlines to the feature. The total flux, however, reflects this balance for {\it all} sightlines to the feature, including those minority ones which are associated with galaxy strong lensing. Thus the brightness of the entire CMB sky is inevitably enhanced by at least a factor corresponding to the average strong lensing amplification for a random direction. The only way of reconciling this with the COBE/FIRAS measurement is to envisage a galaxy number density (or central mass) two orders of magnitude below the observed value. The evidence brought forth here represents another formidable inconsistency between the standard cosmological model and reality. [PDF]  [PS]  [BibTex]  [Bookmark]

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Sarah Bridle
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### [astro-ph/0409655] Reconciling the observed all-sky CMB flux

Am a bit puzzled by this paper - I thought the whole point was that lensing demagnifies some bits as well as magnifies others, so the net flux is the same?
eg. Wang and Mukherjee actually use this feature to remove lensing in astro-ph/0312192.
Would be a pretty shocking revelation if this paper were right!

Anze Slosar
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Well, I am puzzled as well: I would think that you can't systematically amplify light in any random direction for any random observer or you wouldn't conserve energy. And if even weak lensing is undetectable and it is present over all sky, I would be very surpriused if strong lensing, would make a significant statistical contribution: now, could you observe a strongly lensed CMB spot in vicinity of a cluster, i.e. detect a significantly NG feature around some cluster? (I guess SN for NG estimators would be very poor, but you might want to average over many clusters...)