"Puzzling": Galaxies in the early universe rotate clockwise too often
The James Webb space telescope looks further back in the universe than any other instrument. Now a baffling puzzle has been discovered in the data.
Galaxies in the early universe rotating in the opposite direction to the Milky Way (blue) and in the same direction (red)
(Image: Kansas State University)
Among the particularly distant galaxies explored by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a significant majority rotate clockwise around themselves, with only about a third rotating in the opposite direction. This is unexpected, as the number should actually balance out. This is explained by a researcher from Kansas State University, who noticed the unexplained imbalance. No special knowledge is needed for this – Anyone looking at the images from the space telescope can easily recognize this. He has two possible explanations for the disproportion, one with consequences for our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, the other with equally far-reaching consequences. It is not yet clear whether one of them explains the discovery.
Are we living in a black hole?
The images evaluated for the analysis come from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalaxtical Survey (JADES) with a total of 263 extremely distant galaxies for which the direction of rotation can be determined. The finding that around two thirds of them rotate clockwise is one of the “simplest and at the same time most puzzling observations of the deep universe”. The study was carried out with computer support. If you mark the direction of rotation on the image in color, for example, the disproportion is immediately apparent even to the untrained eye, explains computer scientist Lior Shamir in the article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Actually, in a random and sufficiently large section of the universe, galaxies should rotate in one direction about as often as in the other. If this is really not the case in the early universe, it could be because “the universe was born rotating”, says Shamir. This would fit in with theories according to which the entire universe comprises the interior of a black hole. This model is known as “black hole cosmology”, and the first approaches to it are around half a century old. If the universe really did rotate during the Big Bang, our theories of the cosmos would be incomplete and would need to be revised, says Shamir.
The alternative explanation would not have quite as far-reaching consequences, but it would not be without consequences if it were true. The researcher points out that the Earth itself orbits the Milky Way. Due to the Doppler effect, light from galaxies rotating in the opposite direction should generally arrive at us brighter than the light from the rest. If this explains the discovery, this effect would be stronger than expected. It could explain why such galaxies are so clearly overrepresented in the sample. In this case, our distance measurements for the early universe would have to be recalibrated, writes Shamir. This would then possibly have consequences for the puzzle of the inconsistent Hubble constants.
(mho)
