Searching for concentric low variance circles in the cosmic microwave
  background
  In a recent paper, Gurzadyan & Penrose claim to have found directions in the
sky around which there are multiple concentric sets of annuli with anomalously
low variance in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These features are
presented as evidence for a particular theory of the pre-Big Bang Universe. We
are able to reproduce the analysis these authors presented for data from the
WMAP satellite and we confirm the existence of these apparently special
directions in the newer Planck data. However, we also find that these features
are present at the same level of abundance in simulated Gaussian CMB skies,
i.e. they are entirely consistent with the predictions of the standard
cosmological model.
