Slashdot Mirror
Spiral Galaxy Spins the Wrong Way
Ant writes: "The New Scientist has an article about a galaxy in the constellation Centaurus is puzzling astronomers by spinning in the wrong direction. NGC 4622 has bright twisting arms containing newborn stars and lies 111 million light years away."
CNN has an article with more information.
I think it's time we wrote our local congresspeople to get this remedied.
That galaxy must be in the southern hemisphere of the universe?
You're continuing to misinterpret the article. The statement was that, for normal galaxies, the spiral arms trail the direction of rotation. That is, if the galaxy itself is rotating "clockwise", the spiral arms trail behind in a "counterclockwise" fashion.
However, in this case, the spiral arms lead in FRONT of the galaxy's rotation. That is, if the galaxy is rotating "clockwise", the arms stretch forward in the "clockwise" direction; if the galaxy is rotating ccw, the arms also stretch forward ccw!
The actual direction of rotation of the galaxy is irrelevant, the unexpected fact was the orientation of the spiral arms of the galaxy relative to the galaxy itself. Even in the event of an overlay, the rotation of the spiral arms in the unexpected direction could still be clearly observed.
In your given case, with two galaxies possessing "normal" behaviour, the arms on both galaxies would trail in the direction of the rotation. If they were spinning in opposite directions, then which arm belonged to which galaxy would be entirely evident through the direction in which the spiral arms were rotating.
Your objections, then, are entirely groundless.
But I suppose we can just blame the editors for the vague title.
----------
Floccinaucinihilipilification - the action or habit of judging something to be worthless
Here is a link to the guy's site--much more information and should be read before anybody starts making-up explanations.