Astrolunch - 8th October

Chris Blake
Measuring our cosmic motion

We are moving through the cosmos. We can tell because the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background is 0.1% higher in our direction of motion - it contains a "dipole" imprint due to the Doppler effect. If our standard picture of cosmology is right, this dipole should also occur in the surface density of distant galaxies on the sky. I present the first evidence for this effect, using the distribution of radio galaxies. This result supports the standard cosmological interpretation of the CMB.