CMASS galaxy sample and the ontological status of the cosmological principle

TL;DR

This study tests the cosmological principle using galaxy survey data, finding inhomogeneity in galaxy distribution but confirming consistency with theoretical models based on the principle, clarifying its ontological status in cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a homogeneity test of galaxy distribution using the BOSS DR12 CMASS sample and clarifies the ontological status of the cosmological principle in light of observational and theoretical comparisons.

Findings

Observed galaxy distribution is inhomogeneous up to 300 Mpc/h.

Data is consistent with theoretical models based on the cosmological principle.

No inconsistency in the ontological status of the cosmological principle.

Abstract

The cosmological principle (CP), assuming spatially homogeneous and isotropic background geometry in the cosmological scale, is a fundamental assumption in modern cosmology. Recent observations of the galaxy redshift survey provide relevant data to confront the principle with observation. We present a homogeneity test for the matter distribution using the BOSS DR12 CMASS galaxy sample and clarify the ontological status of the CP. As a homogeneity criterion, we compare the observed data with similarly constructed random distributions using the number count in the truncated cones method. Comparisons are also made with three theoretical results using the same method: (i) the dark matter halo mock catalogs from the N-body simulation, (ii) the log-normal distributions derived from the theoretical matter power spectrum, and (iii) direct estimation from the theoretical power spectrum. We show that the observed distribution is statistically impossible as a random distribution up to 300 Mpc/h in radius, which is around the largest statistically available scale. However, comparisons with the three theoretical results show that the observed distribution is consistent with these theoretically derived results based on the CP. We show that the observed galaxy distribution (light) and the simulated dark matter distribution (matter) are quite inhomogeneous even on a large scale. Here, we clarify that there is no inconsistency surrounding the ontological status of the CP in cosmology. In practice, the CP is applied to the metric and the metric fluctuation is extremely small in all cosmological scales. This allows the CP to be valid as the averaged background in metric. The matter fluctuation, however, is decoupled from the small nature of metric fluctuation in the subhorizon scale. What is directly related to the matter in Einstein's gravity is the curvature, a quadratic derivative of the metric.