You can have gas made of molecules, a gas of photons, a gas of electrons, etc.
As long as you have a large ensemble of free particles in a given volume you can call it a gas.
I guess that if a high-energy physicist can some of his time to learn some basic astrophysics (like measuring galaxies alignment).
We clearly recognize the work of a particle physicist here:
1) Longo defines his measurement;
2) He selects and describes his sample;
3) He does his analysis by comparing the data with Monte Carlo data;
4) He concludes and indicates the confidence level of his analysis.
That`s a pretty robust method which generates most results in experimental particle physics.
If Longo`s analysis is correct, it could indicate a coupling between the angular momenta of the galaxies (like the spins of the nuclei in a solid which generate ferromagnetism through Ising coupling). There could be several domains of aligned galaxies in the Universe (since Longo looked only at a close region), like polycristallic iron.
This discovery could even give us information about dark matter if we suppose that the galaxies are loosely aligned on a vector field. A wild hypothesis could be that this vector field is the (spin-1) interaction field of dark matter particles, which would be required to be fermions.
Slashdot Mirror
You can have gas made of molecules, a gas of photons, a gas of electrons, etc. As long as you have a large ensemble of free particles in a given volume you can call it a gas.
I guess that if a high-energy physicist can some of his time to learn some basic astrophysics (like measuring galaxies alignment). We clearly recognize the work of a particle physicist here: 1) Longo defines his measurement; 2) He selects and describes his sample; 3) He does his analysis by comparing the data with Monte Carlo data; 4) He concludes and indicates the confidence level of his analysis. That`s a pretty robust method which generates most results in experimental particle physics. If Longo`s analysis is correct, it could indicate a coupling between the angular momenta of the galaxies (like the spins of the nuclei in a solid which generate ferromagnetism through Ising coupling). There could be several domains of aligned galaxies in the Universe (since Longo looked only at a close region), like polycristallic iron. This discovery could even give us information about dark matter if we suppose that the galaxies are loosely aligned on a vector field. A wild hypothesis could be that this vector field is the (spin-1) interaction field of dark matter particles, which would be required to be fermions.