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> The same solo author (a computer scientist) has made many similar claims based on a variety of datasets. Often coming to completely contradictory conclusions. Some of these claims have been followed up by astronomers, who found errors in his analysis and poor statistical tests. His claims have been discussed in this sub before. Independent studied have found no significant evidence of anisotropy.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/534/2/1553/7762193

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ApJ...907..123I/abstra...

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017MNRAS.466.3928H/abstra...

>Take his claims about JWST as an example. In 2024 he wrote a paper about some early data, claiming to find more galaxies rotating with the Milky Way. He claimed based on a sample of just 34 galaxies that the signal was significant. Now he has looked at a wider dataset of the same area, which should allow him to verify his analysis. But it shows exactly the opposite, more anti. So he writes a paper saying this new result is definitely significant but doesn't reflect on the fact he has written two papers which contradict each other. He has failed to reproduce his own result. The take away is that his results are not as significant as he claims. He's also looking at a tiny area, and nearby galaxies can have correlated spins. He doesn't take this into account either. There are multiple JWST fields in different directions he could examine in different directions to test his claims, there are two JADES fields, but he only publishes one.

>I do wish the MNRAS editors would take measures to stop publishing low quality claims like this without more robust review. If you look at the text, it’s largely repeating results from his old papers. There’s very little discussion of the new results.

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/cosmology/comments/1ja9i53/the_dist...

> This preferred direction of spin might be due to one of two reasons: either our entire universe exists in a black hole, or astronomers have been measuring the universe’s expansion incorrectly

This is the subtitle of the article. It’s such a great summary!

The result is only significant to 3.39 sigma. Pretty good chance this is just a random fluctuation that will go away if you look at more galaxies.

I was reading this and thinking, what if there’s no such thing as scale. Like, obviously there is in some sense, but what if there’s some kind of theory of relativity for scale as well, maybe scale is relative to gravity and gravity isn’t constant or something like that. So for example a universe as detailed as ours with sentient beings and all that could exist inside a quark, and we could in fact be living inside a proton or something, seen from someone else’s perspective. And it’s that level of detail, forever, in every direction.

Or maybe not, anyways back to work.

so i guess the underlying assumption is that this looks out from out perspective in a single static orientation, because this says nothing to me about their orientation which i think is what they're trying to convey by saying clockwise?

or i suppose this is clockwise/counterclockwise in regards to the direction they're moving in?

2/3 doesn't seem that significant if they think it should be a 50/50 split, we might just not be seeing enough

What if we're just upside down? :)

Does that mean we're in the northern or southern unisphere ?

Correction: Oops, The Telescope Was Just Spinning Counter-Clockwise, Our Bad

Maybe anti matter galaxies would spin the other way

Everybody here is talking about the black hole hypothesis, but to me it seems that the other explanation, a wrong assumption about the rotation of our own galaxy, is more likely: because it could explain 2 other problems as well.

> "The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.”

But rotation direction depends on the observer. If i see galaxy spinning clockwise, this means someone observing galaxy from behind it sees it rotating counter clockwise. So are we just located so in the universe that we see 2/3 spinning clockwise and another counter?

Seems like we've got a few of these imbalances now where you'd expect 50:50 but instead it's skewed to one side where nature had a different idea

Matter-antimatter ratio

Left vs right handed molecules

Now galaxy spin directions

Maybe there are others I missed too

Clockwise relative to what? Does the universe have an "upwards" direction?

Or is it just relative to all the other galaxies?

Potentially a very dumb question, but seeing the difference between cyclones and hurricane on earth (clock-wise, anti-clock-wise)...

Does it mean that we are, potentially, on one of two poles(?) of the observable universe, if we're observing most galaxies around us rotating a certain way?

Complete layman's question: If we would indeed be inside a black hole wouldn't we be able to observe new energy and matter entering?

Related question: the horizon of a black hole is expanding when the mass increases. Could this map to the expansion of our universe, which seems to expand faster and faster?

> Due to an effect called the Doppler shift, astronomers expect galaxies rotating opposite to the Milky Way’s motion to appear brighter

How does this work? The page it links to doesn't explain why rotation would matter.

Edit: To clarify - one side of the galaxy would be moving towards us, and one away from us, no matter which direction it spins in, so this should not affect the average brightness of the entire galaxy.

The original paper (https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/538/1/76/8019798?logi...) links to a few papers discussing this, among them https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/15/6/1190 It doesn't answer my question (or if it does, I didn't understand it), but it gives a magnitude for the expected effect on brightness - 0.6%. I do not think that would explain the 1:2 ratio of observed spin directions.

Fascinating.

Did it require JWST to notice this, or did we just _not check_ until now?

Is there a notable asymmetry in, say, the spin directions of galaxies contained in the Hubble XDF?

EDIT:

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Lior Shamir has written that a lot of unrelated sky surveys recently have shown an asymmetry in the past few years, but only down around ~2%.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/16/10/1389

https://aas.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/lior_aas236.pdf

JWST's asymmetry in both early work and more recent deep fields is more than an order of magnitude stronger.

EDIT2: Notably they show anisotropic asymmetry: The galaxies are different rotations when you look in different directions, with something like +6% in one direction and -5% in another. But still nothing like the +50% now being reported as a general feature.

approximately 60% of the 263 galaxies examined were found to rotate clockwise, while about 40% rotated counterclockwise. The study’s results have a significance level of approximately 3.39 sigma, indicating a moderate chance that the findings could be due to random fluctuations

Also

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43372271 ("Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This JWS Telescope discovery (space.com)", 56 comments)

must be something left out, because a galaxies r/l rotation is dependent on which side it is bieng viewed from, and since the are unlabled as to face and back, what is the basis for the handedness of something spinning in the void, with presumably most of the galaxies tilted at every angle and orientation possible other than aligned with ours. and 263* galaxies is zero galaxies when divided by the minimum number of galaxies, it's not a significant sample * number in study

Is this a robust finding? I heard something about this apparent discrepancy a week or so ago, and it was dismissed as probably just an artifact of dodgy classification and the paper's author was a bit of a kook, a computer scientist who was delving into cosmology to find evidence of the simulation hypothesis.

At this point I'm open to believing our Universe is in a black-hole-like structure.

I used to read a lot about the history of science as a kid.

The one thing that stuck with me is how frequently things we believe to be true are disproven.

This does not surprise me:

> “If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe,”

TIL the universe has a specific "up" direction to even call things counterclockwise. I guess I should have already known this from Star Trek's quadrants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system

This study does not conclusively prove most galaxies rotate clockwise...Just has a somewhat strong observation of asymmetry. Other studies that the paper mentions, and criticizes, did not observe it.

Study is at around 3σ (like 62 heads in 100 flips). It is more likely that future studies disprove it, and this is an issue with the methods, if I am of the betting type... :-)

Should we expect the big bang to have been completely symmetrical? If not, wouldn't most galaxies spin one way versus the other?

If you look at the galaxy from the other side, wouldn’t it be counterclockwise?

Everything turns clockwise from a specific perspective... that's what is interesting here, perspective and consistency.

Wait - even if seen from the opposite side?

If we were on the other side of those galaxies, wouldn't they look like they were spinning counter-clockwise? Or are they measuring spin some other way?

The study is based on 263 galaxies.

It should be fairly easy to determine the rotation direction of any (spiral) galaxy we can see, based on reasonable assumptions about the relationship between rotation and the configuration of the spiral arms. There should be thousands or millions of visible galaxies for which this could be determined (out of the estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe). Perhaps I'm missing something, but why bother reporting a result from such a tiny sample?

It should also be possible to derive more detailed information that just clockwise vs. counter-clockwise. The rotation of a galaxy defines a direction (the galaxy's rotational north pole) and a point on the surface of an imaginary sphere. This could be determined by the galaxy's apparent rotational direction, its orientation, and its position in the sky. It would be interesting to see a plot of those points. In principle, they should be random. (If the points spell out "Go stick your head in a pig", I'll be very sorry that Douglas Adams didn't live to see it.)

We’re six black holes deep

sorry if someone already asked this, but what is clockwise when there's no "up"? The earth axis is like 60 degrees off the axis of milky way, so it's not clear what the frame of reference is.

I wonder if it’s already April’s Fools Day in some parts of the world. The hands of a clock move clockwise if seen from the front, but counterclockwise if seen from the back.

Another potentially dumb question: what does it mean for a 3d body to rotate clockwise? Doesn't a clock, viewed from its back, turn counter-clockwise? So is this just from James Webb's perspective that they rotate clockwise?

The linked article is written in an absurd way. Clockwise is not a fundamental measurement, it's relative to the viewer.

What the original article explains, is that this is relative to our observer point of view (obviously).

It's still very interesting, since, disregarding any potential interaction in our local group, randomness was expected and we should see around 50/50 rotating either way unless one of the explanations came into play.

Time and time again, we are beginning to come to the realization that our entire observable universe is not the whole picture, and we are almost certainly seeing only a localized portion of a much larger and grander universe.

Could this be related that the weak force only interacts with left-handed particles (and right-handed antiparticles)?

My clock also runs clockwise, when seen from one of two sides...

This to me indicates the primordial particle was spinning clockwise.

They analysed only a small patch of sky, which could have a local relative rotation compared to our region of space.

Real science will be when they survey the entire sky, with many small deep-field images.

got it.

Several folks here have recognized that the spin direction depends on whether you look at the plane of the galaxy from ‘above’ or ‘below’. One thing I didn’t see in the article is how the two types of galaxies are distributed across the 3D spherical coordinates when viewed from the earth (or rather from the JWST).

Im thinking: what if there are a bunch of massive objects like black holes in certain directions that are causing the light to bend in a certain way. So what would normally be light coming from the top of the galaxy plane, is actually light reaching us from the bottom of that plane. Would this slew the distribution of the spin one way - I don’t know.

So the universe is left handed?

isn’t counterclockwise same as clockwise whe viewed from the other side?

So do the galaxies rotate clockwise, or did we make clocks that rotate in the direction the galaxies choose? :)

Candidate for hardest collective fall for an April Fool's Day joke in Hacker News history?

Spin a coin on top of a glass table. Observe it from the top, and it spins either clockwise or anticlockwise. Observe it from the bottom and it's the opposite. There are no tables in space. Objects tumble while rotating. It seems we are measuring rotations using a fixed perspective when there is no reason to do so

https://www.comsol.com/blogs/why-do-tennis-rackets-tumble-th...

A sample size of 263 galaxies isn’t enough to draw any conclusion.

Unless you're looking at them from the other side, in which case they rotate counter-clockwise!

Or maybe they're just billboard sprites, always facing the camera, with clockwise animations.

Does it need to be that the whole universe started with rotation, or that our visible part of the universe has a common ancestor?

US left-handed presidents are also over-represented. This is another reason to feel special in our neighborhood.

Did they also check in the northern hemisphere of the observable universe?

On the antipodal side of the universe they mostly rotate counterclockwise. ;-)

Could an equivalent of the Coriolis Force be at play here?

Shouldn't the galaxies in the northern and southern hemispheres spiral in opposite directions? /s

Now if only we could see inside a black hole.

So, there is a visible order about this matter. That they are "rotating", instead of, for example, "Z-Pattern" movement. Amazing.

I was disappointed that the article only once mentioned “from our perspective” in relation to the spin of galaxies. One of the most fascinating things that you first learn about when you try to understand relativity, is the fact that there is no “still” point in the entire universe. Out in space, the point in space one foot in front of your space suit’s helmet can be called still by you, but it is just as reasonable to call a rock racing by you at a million miles an hour the central still point, where all other motion in the universe can be measured against. Because there is no absolute still anywhere. And when you understand that, that’s when all these cool concepts can then be described, related to time changes that happen between two locations when the relative speed difference between the two objects or locations approaches the speed of light. (So you can return from your trip to Alpha Centuri and meet your great great grandson who is older than you.)

And just like there is no still point in the universe, there is no up or down. So yes, it may be true that, IF you select a couple of arbitrary points in the universe to be up and down, THEN you can count how any galaxies spin left vs right. And it is way cool to find out that it doesn’t appear to be 50/50, and to wonder about why. But I think the article author did the readers a disservice by glossing over the “no up or down” fact.

1. Are they really saying "Because we are in a universe with a preferred spin and black holes have spin, we must be inside a black hole?" Tenuous, no?

2. If we are inside a black hole, where is the singularity?