RESPONDING to T Kelly (HAS, August 23), I would remind him I have posted three letters and had five counterpoints, and have only mentioned the Catholic Church once, directly.

By implication, the church would have indeed executed Halton Arp, as they did with Giordano Bruno in 1600.

I am not anti-religion, and indeed think a higher power is at large, but do not think that we should hold ourselves in awe of it, but to confront our fears, and challenge the paradigms put to us, as indeed the Big Bang Theory has been for nearly 90 years.

Consider this: the Planck satellite, launched in 2009, after 15 months of scanning the cosmic microwave background, suggests a “power asymmetry”, that is the CMB is divided into two hemispheres, one side warmer than expected, the other colder.

The dividing line runs almost exactly through the equinoxes, the imaginary line drawn from where the Earth is on March 21 through the Sun to where the Earth is on September 23, and vertically through the North Celestial Pole.

That is a line drawn from the Pole Star through the centre of the Earth.

How can an explosion achieve this?

M Watson, Darlington