Anisotropic Kantowski-Sachs Universe from Gravitational Tunneling and
  its Observational Signatures
  In a landscape of compactifications with different numbers of macroscopic
dimensions, it is possible that our universe has nucleated from a vacuum where
some of our four large dimensions were compact while other, now compact,
directions were macroscopic. From our perspective, this shapeshifting can be
perceived as an anisotropic background spacetime. As an example, we present a
model where our universe emerged from a tunneling event which involves the
decompactification of two dimensions compactified on the two-sphere. In this
case, our universe is of the Kantowski-Sachs type and therefore homogeneous and
anisotropic. We study the deviations from statistical isotropy of the Cosmic
Microwave Background induced by the anisotropic curvature, with particular
attention to the anomalies. The model predicts a quadrupolar power asymmetry
with the same sign and acoustic oscillations as found by WMAP. The amplitude of
the effect is however too small given the current estimated bound on
anisotropic curvature derived from the quadrupole.
