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Analysis of Galaxy Spin Reveals Universe Might Be Left-Handed
Taco Cowboy writes "Someone from US is claiming that the universe was born spinning and continues to do so around a preferred axis."
The full paper has more details. The researchers measured the spin of a number of galaxies in the northern hemisphere; the data indicated a distinct bias toward left-handed spins. "Longo says that the chance that it could be a cosmic accident is something like one in a million. 'If galaxies tend to spin in a certain direction, it means that the overall universe should have a rather large net angular momentum. Since angular momentum is conserved, it seems it [the universe] must have been "born" spinning.'" Naturally, there is some skepticism: "Neta Bahcall, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in the US, feels that there is no solid evidence for a rotating universe. 'The directional spin of spiral galaxies may be impacted by other local gravitational effects,' she said. She believes that this could result in small correlations in spin rotation over distances less than about 200 Mpc – whereas the observable universe is about 14 Gpc in size."
That would explain it.
If the universe spins... what is it spinning in? "Space"?
Does space therefore exist outside the universe (other than in some theoretical brane)?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
So if I have a spinning top sitting on my desk that is not currently spinning, its angular momentum is determined by the spin of its electrons? I guess this is bad astronomy week on slashdot huh.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Okay, so what is the reference frame for the universe, in which you can measure angular momentum, spin, or even velocity (or even origin)? We measure the sphere of "the observable universe" as the sphere where light could have reached us since the universe began, but we can't assume that we're the center of the WHOLE universe. Presumably since the Big Bang, all stars have been moving outward from one point, but from our vantage point (or any vantage point), all other stars are generally moving away from us. I guess I haven't come to understand how you can work backwards to determine an X Y Z of the Big Bang, nevermind additional spin or momentum.
[
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008MNRAS.388.1686L They measured the spin of a few 100000 galaxies in both hemispheres. At first they found the _same_ preferred spin in any direction, then they started mirroring half of the galaxies before showing them to people and the effect vanished. They found no dipole.
...what does that say about all us right-handed people?
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Godel Universe, and that closed timelike loops are possible?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
SciFi ...
So does this explain why, when two spaceships meet in deep space they always seem to share the same vertical orientation ?
No matter what species and innate architetural design sense.
Have we found a "center" of the universe?
Chances of "One in a Million" :
"According to the best estimates of astronomers there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe." (http://www.physics.org/facts/sand-galaxies.asp)
"This study uses 15158 spiral galaxies with redshifts 0.085 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey." (http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2815)
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
If this is true, and the Universe is spinning, wouldn't galaxies in a direction diverge from us faster?
I thought the same thing, glad to know i'm not the only one with android on the mind ! :D
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Ned Flanders will be thrilled.
It probably spins the other way south of the galactic equator.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Maybe we've just been looking at it upside-down?
IANAP, but I guess a single proton spinning with an enormous speed in the opposite direction may null the angular momentum.
Perhaps he just missed that one proton.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
There is a growing school of thought that suggests the Big Bang was the "Whitehole" side of a Blackhole forming in our parent universe. If our universe has angular momentum that would correlate to the angular momentum of the collapsing star when it reached singularity. This would be indicative of at least a precipitating event that lead to the Big Bang precipitating our universe.
Unfortunately, there are so many things that determine chirality (handedness) including the angular momentum of super-massive hot hydrogen clouds, galaxy clusters and super clusters, even the angular momentum caused by the gravitational effects of universal superstructures. Its hard to determine what is a result of the natural evolution of the universe and what might be a contributing factor in the for of an angular momentum. One would have to look at a huge sample of the 100,000,000,000 or more galaxies in the visible universe and see if there is a net angular momentum of their collective rotation. However in building such an explicit model of such an important universal trait, the things we would then know or could at least derive about the large and small grain structures in the universe would be nothing less than incredible.
What does "left-handed spin" even mean when there is no "up"?
If we see a galaxy spinning clockwise, then someone looking at it from the other side (facing us) will see it rotating the other way. If they're all spinning the same way when viewed from our perspective, does that also mean we are at the center of the universe?
How do you know what side you are looking at (top or bottom) to determine correctly in which direction it is spinning? IS there a top or bottom? I highly doubt it...
The cake is a lie.
The universe only seems left handed. If it ever gets into a sword fight with another universe, it will wait for a dramatically opportune time and then announce, "I am not left handed!" (You'll know this has happened when suddenly you are inside-out.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Same here!
I read the pdf linked from the /. link. Despite the fact that the paper is full of technical jargon, I tried to sift through and glean some sense out of it, but I just can't figure out how they can reason that a galaxy has a "left" or "right" spin when such a determination is dependent on the observer's position relative to the galaxy.
The cake is a lie.
More evidence that our observable, perceivable universe even to its furthest reaches is not "all there is". You cannot find context for sidedness within a unary axiom.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The Universe Might Be Left-Handed?
I think it's just using it's left hand for a different sensation...
cumming soon, new galaxies spurting into existance!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Now won't that negate a bit of gravity and be the source of the cosmological constant?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"Longo says that the chance that it could be a cosmic accident is something like one in a million.
So, it IS an accident?
I'm no scientist, but electrons spin around neutrons, moons spin around planets, planets spin around stars, stars spin around black holes, why is it outrageous to thing the galaxies are spinning around something?.. there is stuff out there that humans can't comprehend. If there were more universes revolving around something even larger, we would NEVER know!
Does anyone know whether this is likely to have an effect on scales other than the galactic?
For instance, on small chaotic systems.
Therefore, some of the greatest minds the world has ever known were right handed.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
I have often wondered if the Universe might be the single particle at the center of a black hole, which are always created with a high spin. I understand that this particle takes the shape of a disk due to its rotation, rather than collapsing to a single point. It would explain why galaxies are spreading apart rather than joining together - somehow the stretching of the black hole translates into a 3D effect on the 'inside'. If the black hole were not spinning, I would expect matter in the universe to condense to a black hole, and there would be no 'inside' or 'outside', only a black hole regardless of how you look at it.
To me, this makes sense as energy seems to flow into the patterns of matter - subatomic particles and atoms - like jelly into a mold. There are some hidden rules at play that make matter the way it is, and not some other way. No matter how you convert energy to matter, you end up with it forming these elementary particles. I would expect that to be true for the mass inside of a black hole, in the same way it's true for matter on the outside. The black hole, viewed from the outside, would have the same mass as our Universe.
Unfortunately, I can't think of any way to test this hypothesis, though it might be interesting to the compute the spin of such a black hole, and see if we can correlate it to any phenomenon we can observe.
They're always trying to put their spin on everything. Well, they succeeded.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I wonder what the Tea Party will make of this. Oh sorry I forgot, they don't even like reading newspapers. Science won't even make their radar.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Big whorls have little whorls
That feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lesser whorls
And so on to viscosity.
So now we know how big a big whorl is.
The radius of the observable universe is about 14Gly, not 14Gpc; only off by a factor of Pi (not exact, but a handy mnemonic), but still, like the old saying goes "Off by a factor of Pi is still wrong."
--MarkusQ
The actual paper is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2815
Here is a FAQ entry about rotation of the universe and how general relativity would describe it: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=506988
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea. It's perfectly consistent with all the known laws of physics. There is in fact no well-established physical principle that should make non-rotation any more likely than rotation. There are other techniques for detecting rotation of the universe (see the references in the FAQ entry); their claim would become much more convincing if it could be confirmed by one of those techniques. If it's right, then it probably implies that inflation was an incorrect theory; I believe that in cosmological models that include both rotation and inflation, the angular velocity dies out exponentially, so it should be unobservably small today.
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Why else would he have said to a room of politicians including then-president Bush "Reality clearly has a liberal bias."? Yup, the universe spins left. He called it.
There's something sinister about these findings.
YOU spin around universe!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
made an ass out of yourself with your pompous posting.
Is Slashdot up to 8 digit UIDs already?
Have gnu, will travel.
What is this "hand" of which you speak? The vast majority of the inhabitants of the universe have tentacles!
Have gnu, will travel.
I thought "parsec" was a unit of time?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There is a similar effect regarding translation in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
You can detect movement with relation to an absolute reference frame, indicated by the cosmic background. The observer who's moving will observe a blue-shifted cosmic radiation towards one side and red-shifted to the opposite side.
Linear motion isn't relative either.
I always knew that the Universe was a sinister place.
Did anyone else click on the link thinking this was regarding a new Samsung phone?