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All Disk Galaxies Rotate Once Every Billion Years (astronomy.com)

According to a new study published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers discovered that all disk galaxies rotate about once every billion years, no matter their size or mass. Astronomy Magazine reports: To carry out the study, the researchers measured the radial velocities of neutral hydrogen in the outer disks of a plethora of galaxies -- ranging from small dwarf irregulars to massive spirals. These galaxies differed in both size and rotational velocity by up to a factor of 30. With these radial velocity measurements, the researchers were able to calculate the rotational period of their sample galaxies, which led them to conclude that the outer rims of all disk galaxies take roughly a billion years to complete one rotation. However, the researchers note that further research is required to confirm the clock-like spin rate is a universal trait of disk galaxies and not just a result of selection bias. Based on theoretical models, the researchers also expected to find only sparse populations of young stars and interstellar gas on the outskirts of these galaxies. But instead, they discovered a significant population of much older stars mingling with the young stars and gas.

19 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, we don't understand the mechanics of galactic rotation, it is not the rate expected from observed matter and gravity and so we postulate "dark matter".

    Why indeed....big question

  2. Oversimplified by lgw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    TFS oversimplifies things a bit. The finding is that the outer edge of these galaxies rotates at about the same rate for all of them. That's not entirely surprising: the more massive the galaxy, the faster the rotation at any given distance, but also the more distant the outer rim. It also implies a similar ration of dark matter to familiar matter across these galaxies - which again isn't shocking, but is interesting if the ration has to be very similar. If it's confirmed they really do line up this closely that's probably big news for those modelling galaxy formation.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. Re:The obvious problem with this by CaptainDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Your speculation fails the sniff test.

    The electromagnetic force affects a very, very short distance.

    If galaxies are "communicating," with each other and are similar to synchronized swimmers, it's going to be via gravity (including the little-understood dark matter) or perhaps entanglement on a quantum level.

    There's a lot we don't know, and the substance of this article is on that list.

    This is a preliminary finding and serves as a clue, only.

    This recent revelation, if verified, could lead us to a solution for the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  4. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're applying the wrong toolbox - electrostatics. The macroscopic behavior of charged particles is defined by the domain of plasma physics, not electrostatics. You can observe this simple fact by observing any novelty plasma globe: Plasmas form into filaments within the laboratory, and these filaments conduct electric currents. The filaments tend to wrap around one another without combining, demonstrating both a long-range attraction and a short-range repulsion. What this means, in practice, is that the electric force can be extended to any distance. Wherever the plasma filament goes, it carries with it the electric force.

    "Several researchers have reported direct evidence for large scale electric currents along astrophysical jets," and not only that, but in plasma physics, it's not always the case that the plasma emits any light. Plasmas can conduct even while they are in a dark mode - much like the wires in your home, of course.

  5. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    Let me give you another example of a vindication which everybody missed for electricity in space doing things of importance:

    In July of 2016, it was admitted that many galaxies exhibit two separate bulges:

    Many disc galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have a central bulge that resembles either a box or an unshelled peanut. This bulge may form when the circular orbits of stars become elongated, creating a “bar” of stars that runs through the centre and tilts out of the disc’s plane. The combined effect makes the once-flat galaxy look like it has buckled under enormous pressure.

    People who do not track the electricity in space debate would not see this as a vindication for those claims, but it certainly is.

    Anthony Peratt simulated proper galactic rotation curves in the early 80's on government supercomputers without the need for any dark matter. . Look carefully at the simulation results, and you will see your two separate bulges.

  6. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    Slashdot is mangling my links. Here's the link to Peratt's galaxy simulation: plasma-universe.com/Galaxy_formation

  7. Re:The obvious problem with this by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    your electric universe nonsense has been debunked many times. Black holes in this universe are electrically neutral, even the stars they came from are. The charged particles emitted from a star, including our sun, are both positive and negative.

  8. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    The tech community needs to rid itself of this overt bias against electricity in space. We can have a debate over the nuance of whether or not electricity in space does things of importance, but this tradition of calling anybody who even mentions electricity in space a crazy person is increasingly out-of-step with mainstream astrophysical consensus. Astrophysicists increasingly agree that electricity travels through space; what they are trying to suggest is that it doesn't actually do anything of importance. Whether or not that is the case demands that we observe, over time, whether or not we can see evidence that the cosmic plasma is behaving as laboratory plasma (as conductors). This is not something that people will be able to determine without even trying.

  9. Re:The obvious problem with this by burtosis · · Score: 2

    Im wondering how these observations will reflect on how electrically charged black holes tend to be. I've been under the assumption that nearly all black holes tended to be electrically neutral, but then again I'm just an armchair astrophysicist.

  10. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    "Sir Fred Hoyle, 67, ... said he believed a free and imaginative approach was the key to scientific progress: 'The solution to unsolved problems must lie in unexpected directions. If the conventional view were correct, the problems would already be solved.' Conformism meant fewer discoveries were being made. 'The only way discoveries can be made in that system is for people to stumble on them by chance. Everything becomes accidental, without directed purpose."

    - Reported in The Australian, 23 November 1982

  11. Re:The obvious problem with this by CaptainDork · · Score: 2

    For now (science is fluid) the likelihood of a non-rotating black hole is very slim.

    The in-fall of mass in an accretion disk has an angular momentum that will be rotating in unison with other particles in orbit around the event horizon.

    Those particles will produce an electromagnetic field.

    However, the the electrical charge of the black hole will be neutral.

    That same accretion disk will make sure of that.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  12. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    Re: "Plasma is hot, dense"

    Somebody needs to alert all of the office building managers who have been using plasma-based lighting (aka "fluorescent lights") above everybody's heads that plasmas are always hot.

  13. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    You guys are really asking for somebody to document all of the numerous misconceptions which are posted about plasmas into Slashdot comments. The tech community is completely discrediting itself on this subject of cosmic plasmas. Here's some friendly advice: Think about where you learned what you are posting, and if you cannot identify the source, then phrase it as a question.

  14. Phonograph records by Latent+Heat · · Score: 2

    Galaxies are indeed not rigid disks, but the remarkable thing is that your garden-variety spiral galaxy behaves much more like a rigid disk than your angular-momentum-conserving bathtub drain. These rotation rates, by the way, are measured using the Doppler shift observed in spectrographic observations of those galaxies.

    It is hypothesized that the "halo" of a spiral galaxy must either contain considerable unobserved "dark matter" or Newton's laws of acceleration and gravitation need a correction term. Most astrophysicists base their work on the Dark Matter explanation, but there are holdouts for MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). So yes, the outer portions of a spiral galaxy have nearly the same rate of angular rotation as in the inner parts, and physical theory needs to account for this conundrum.

  15. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    I have consistently posted specific technical claims to make my case, and you guys have consistently taken the conversation back to narratives and stereotypes every time.

  16. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    Here's a shot of the aurora that you may have missed. Long-range attraction, short-range repulsion. You can derive this from the math. Fluids equations will not be of much help. It's called a Birkeland current.

  17. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    There is no need to break the rules. All of the interesting things happen without any of that.

  18. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    Re: "The further we progress in our understanding, the harder and harder it gets have such huge breakthroughs."

    Cellular and Molecular Biology 51, 815-820 (2005)
    Revitalizing Science In A Risk-averse Culture: Reflections On The Syndrome And Prescriptions For Its Cure
    G.H. Pollack

    ... A half-century ago, breakthroughs were fairly common events that could be counted on to occur from time to time on an unpredictable but not infrequent basis. Pioneering such breakthroughs were scientific heroes -- legendary figures such as Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Richard Feynman, James Watson, Francis Crick, and others, names familiar even to lay people ...

    But things have changed. While the past 30 years have brought a great outpouring of scientific results, breakthroughs are less common. Modern equivalents of Pauling, Salk, and Watson-Crick are not easy to identify. Considering the massive investment in science today, why is it that scientific heroes have become so scarce? Why so few conceptual breakthroughs? I refer to realized breakthroughs such as the biochemical nature of heredity or the polio vaccine, not incipient breakthroughs whose realization seems always just around the corner. Can you name more than a handful of realized breakthroughs that have come during the past three decades? ...

    Some argue that this settling down is all but inevitable. After all, science today is far more complicated than it has been, often requiring teams of investigators and large groups to pursue effectively. Others argue that there is simply not much more to be discovered -- that the breakthroughs have had their heyday and we need content ourselves with merely filling in the gaps. Thus, breakthroughs might not be expected to occur on an everyday basis.

    Perhaps some of this is true -- but a significant role may also be played by another factor: the growing aversion to risk taking. Although funding agencies have much to be proud of for past achievements, it is broadly perceived that they have become less agile in dealing with proposals that dissent from orthodoxy...

    Challengers of the status quo rarely succeed in today’s scientific climate. Hence, those approaches most apt to generate conceptual breakthroughs are throttled before they can emerge from the scientific womb.

    The funding agencies worldwide are aware of this problem. Several agencies have held recent workshops to deal with the issue, and some measures have been taken over and above existing remedial programs. In the US, for example, the term 'high risk' now permeates review guidelines. And, both the NSF and the NIH have established special programs to encourage novel approaches...

    These institutional responses acknowledge the problem. Yet, it is broadly felt that the responses are nominal. Few dissenters from orthodoxy report any more success than before. The reviewers are largely the same, and have not abruptly changed their well-honed views. Admonishing them to be 'less conservative' comes with no guarantee that they will be. Thus, effective action has yet to be taken."

  19. Re:The obvious problem with this by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 2

    What I've observed over time are a lot of poorly-argued hit pieces which people who claim to believe in peer review immediately adopted as truth. In some cases -- as in the case of Professor Koberlein of RIT -- there have been some glaring errors in his analysis.

    For example, this claim he made in that article (below) is completely false, and there is -- to this day -- no retraction observable in the article posted to his own personal blog:

    The EU model predicts the Sun should produce no neutrinos. The EU model clearly fails this test, because neutrinos are produced by the Sun.

    Had he simply googled "electric universe neutrinos", the professor would have run into the EU explanation for solar neutrinos.

    Koberlein recently published a redaction -- after four years of refusing to do so -- where he clumsily admitted that this claim is not entirely accurate.

    It's interesting that people who claim to believe in peer review are so quick to accept critiques which have not been reviewed by anybody. It's also interesting that Koberlein does not go back and correct the original article, so anybody reading that -- to this day -- would have to sift through all of the comments attached to it in order to understand that a mistake was made. I'm betting that most people don't do that.