'Multiverse' theory suggested by microwave background

[Anomalocaris]

This; http://news.discovery.com/space/dark-flow-universe.html

The article doesn't state it but this was predicted by the version of string theory worked on by Laura Mersini-Houghton in 2006, 2 years prior to the phenomenon showing up in the data.

"In 2006, Mersini-Houghton with collaborators predicted a series of observational imprints of her theory [4] for the birth of our high energy universe from the multiverse, by using the unitarity principle of quantum mechanics (no information loss). They predicted the existence of a giant void far away of size about 12 degrees in the southern hemisphere of the sky; the 'tilting' of the gravitational potential in the universe, which gives rise to a Dark Flow of structure, caused by superhorizon entanglement of our universe with all else in the multiverse;"

The validity of the very method used to deduce existence of dark flow is challenged, so let's not say prematurely that string theory made a successful prediction. But even if it did, Lee Smolin points out that string theory seems to be so constructed as to be able to generate vast numbers of sets of different predictions. He mention around 10 ^500 fundamentally different predictions about that universe that is consistent with what we see so far.

Any theory that can generate 10^500 mutually exclusive sets of predictions about everything in the universe ought to be able generate a few sets that predict a impressive number of feature of the universe successfully even if the theory has nothing more than coincidental predictive power.

Dark flow does not seem to be required by but a small set of string theories. Many other string theoreticians using the same string theory predicted a universe without dark flow. This ought to give one pause before giving string theory credit for predicting dark flow. Contrast this with Relativity's specific prediction that light would necessarily be bent by the gravity of the sun by specific amount indicated, and no one who read relativity would have used it to predict light to remain unbent by the gravity of the sun.