you can see an image similar
to the image produced by a Mollweide projection of Earth.
It’s not
just that they both face the same challenge of trying to represent a spherical
surface on a flat display. It’s the patterns on the image, the grouping of
yellow dots on the CMB against the black outline of the continents on the map.
Don’t you see it? OK,
let me help you.
But the similarities vague.
Large chunks of northern Asia are missing, Australia isn’t complete and the
Pacific Ocean seems awfully narrow. But that’s the point. Because the
similarities are vague, they are open to interpretation.
Sketchy evidence is
exactly what a good conspiracy theory is based on. Just look at photographs of sasquatch,
UFOs, shadowy figures behind The Grassy Knoll or the discovery of Noah’s Ark on
the side of Mount Ararat. The link between reality (the CMB image) and the
fantasy is easy to bridge. Rising sea levels will change the shapes of the
continents, wind time forward a few million years and America will come closer
to Asia. Look at the CMB image in a fairground mirror and perhaps the likeness
is perfect.
So, the shape Earth’s continents is mirrored in
the distribution of radiation from the big bang. That’s a correlation to
intrigue everyone from the religiously devout to the most dedicated conspiracy
theorists. Is this a message telling us that the
Universe was built just for us. So either there is a God, or we are part of
some super-being’s experiment (or both).
Perhaps the exact shape tells us when the Earth will be destroyed. Just watch
the planet’s surface move closer and closer to the CMB image. Perhaps there is spot
on the CMB that indicates the location of the Holy Grail or the Arc of the Covenant
or the burial place of Genghis Khan. Perhaps the spot is so small that current
technology hasn’t exposed it yet. Perhaps we just aren’t looking hard enough.
The problem is, while it is amusing to
speculate about such things, there are people who will take it seriously. After
all, there are still people who think the Earth is flat. And if such
claims are made, the forces of pragmatism will rise with a collective sigh in
defense of rationality and the battle lines will be drawn. And in this I think,
lies the really good story. The battle between the gullible and incredulous with
their ‘irrefutable’ proofs of nothing on one side and the objective and
scientific on the other, taking up the cudgels for common sense, reality and
evidence based theories, as they must do all the time.
