Oxford astro-ph Coffee

Hada et al reckon they can position the black hole to +/- 20 microarcsec, and resolve jet emission 100 Schwarzschild radii away!

"We argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically verified fully classical theory of probability. We comment on the general implications of this view, and specifically question the application of classical probability theory to cosmology in cases where key questions are known to have no quantum answer."

Discovery of a group of quasars which appear to form a structure over 1 Gpc across. This is much larger than any previously-suggested homogeneity scale in LambdaCDM.

Modern MCMC method for cosmological parameter estimation. "While Metropolis-Hastings is constrained by overheads, CosmoHammer is able to accelerate the sampling process from a wall time of 30 hours on a single machine to 16 minutes by the efficient use of 2048 cores. Such short wall times for complex data sets opens possibilities for extensive model testing and control of systematics."

Perhaps an ACT team member could give us a verdict on this?

There's been a growing awareness that the 'free' functions used to parameterise modified gravity aren't really as arbitrary as one might first think. This methods paper suggests how to use these ideas - although the forecast isn't all that encouraging. Still, the proof of the pudding is yet to come.

I'll let Phil do the talking on this one!