Searching for a message in the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background

TL;DR

This study analyzes the cosmic microwave background's angular power spectrum from Planck and WMAP data to search for potential embedded messages, estimating an information capacity of about 1,000 bits, but finds no meaningful message.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract and analyze potential messages from the CMB power spectrum, applying it to real satellite data for the first time.

Findings

No meaningful message detected in the current data

Estimated information capacity of about 1,000 bits

Method demonstrated for analyzing cosmic signals for embedded messages

Abstract

The Creator of the universe could place a message on the most cosmic of all billboards, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky. It was proposed by Hsu & Zee (2006) to to search for such a message in the CMB angular power spectrum. I process the temperature measurements taken by the Planck and WMAP satellites and extract the binary bit-stream. I estimate the information content of a potential message in the stream as about 1,000 bits. The universality of the message may be limited by the observer-dependent location in space and the finite observation time of order 100 bn years after the big bang. I find no meaningful message in the actual bit-stream, but include it at the end of the manuscript for the interested reader to scrutinize.