Too few spots in the cosmic microwave background
  We investigate the abundance of large-scale hot and cold spots in the WMAP-5
temperature maps and find considerable discrepancies compared to Gaussian
simulations based on the LCDM best-fit model. Too few spots are present in the
reliably observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) region, i.e., outside the
foreground-contaminated parts excluded by the KQ75 mask. Even simulated maps
created from the original WMAP-5 estimated multipoles contain more spots than
visible in the measured CMB maps. A strong suppression of the lowest multipoles
would lead to better agreement. The lack of spots is reflected in a low mean
temperature fluctuation on scales of several degrees (4 to 8), which is only
shared by less than 1% (0.16%-0.62%) of Gaussian LCDM simulations. After
removing the quadrupole, the probabilities change to 2.5%-8.0%. This shows the
importance of the anomalously low quadrupole for the statistical significance
of the missing spots. We also analyze a possible violation of Gaussianity or
statistical isotropy (spots are distributed differently outside and inside the
masked region).
