cosmic tao

I've been at least slightly ill for nearly a month now. I haven't had a fever in nearly a week, so I'm feeling ever so much better.  I still have a lingering cough, though, that's far more annoying that it is debilitating. I haven't done a good job of reading up on livejournal entries recently (or posting), but I hope to act a little more perky from now on.


This image was the Astronomy Picture Of The Day on March 9th. It is the cosmic microwave background, mapped out according to doppler shift so that we can easily see the areas moving towards (blue) and away (red) from us. It's strange that it should appear as a good approximation of the Tao.  Mapping out movement on a sphere always comes out wonky to me, so the curved division between the two halves doesn't much bother me... but what's with the dimples in each half?  That bothers me.  I'm not having any luck coming up with a logical, non-anthropocentric explanation for that effect.