Some of the matter falling towards the [supermassive black] holes is converted into energy. This energy is delivered to the surrounding gas, and leads to large outflows of matter, which stretch for hundreds of thousands of light years from the black holes, reaching far beyond the extent of their host galaxies.
With the increasingly precise data provided by WMAP, there have been a number of claims that the CMB exhibits anomalies, such as very large scale anisotropies, anomalous alignments, and non-Gaussian distributions. The most longstanding of these is the low-l multipole controversy. Even in the COBE map, it was observed that the quadrupole (l = 2, spherical harmonic) has a low amplitude compared to the predictions of the Big Bang. In particular, the quadrupole and octupole (l = 3) modes appear to have an unexplained alignment with each other and with both the ecliptic plane and equinoxes, A number of groups have suggested that this could be the signature of new physics at the greatest observable scales
chief scientist from WMAP, Charles L. Bennett suggested coincidence and human psychology were involved, "I do think there is a bit of a psychological effect; people want to find unusual things."
Dark energy is a negative pressure (meaning it is repulsive): it has a negative equation of state (probably exactly -1, if it is a cosmological constant -- but we have only constrained it to <-0.6). If the universe is imagined to be like a fluid (an assumption that is apt), then there has to exist some kind of negative pressure in order to get a universe that looks like the one that we see. We just call that negative pressure "dark energy." — Astro Cat
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