This is why popular news coverage of science can often make subtle mistakes that might change the meaning of something.
This UPI news coverage talks about a recent publication in PRL that studied the CMB and found no large-scale anisotropy in our universe. What this means is that our universe, based on the CMB, is isotropic, i.e. the same in all direction, and that our universe has no detectable rotation.
However, instead of saying that, it keeps harping on the idea that the universe "has no direction". It has directions. In fact, it has infinite directions. It is just that it looks the same in all of these directions. Not having a preferred direction, or being isotropic, is not exactly the same as "having no direction".
If you read the APS Physics article accompanying this paper, you'll notice that such a phrase was never used.
I don't know. As a layperson, if you read that UPI news article, what impression does that leave you? Or am I making a mountain out of a mole hill here?
Zz.
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