“Riddle of cosmology”: Giant structures revolve in space

Thursday 17 June 2021

“Riddles of Cosmology”
Giant structures rotate in space

The universe is a huge carousel. Not only do planets, stars, and galaxies rotate, but so do the vast structures that run through space. These are self-rotating galaxies. Researchers have now discovered the principle behind this movement.

Sunrise every morning is proof that the earth is spinning. But the sun also spins – like galaxies and galaxies. Everything changes internationally. Even the largest known structures in the universe – long strands between galaxies – rotate, according to an international research team in the journal Nature Astronomy. The invention will lead to new insights into the origin of rotational movements.

“Where angular momentum comes from in the cosmic structure is one of the unsolved mysteries of cosmology,” explains Ben Wang’s team at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Podstam. In today’s standard model, all cosmic structures first arise from the slow contraction of an evenly distributed object. In the initial stage after the Big Bang, there are no rotational movements – so where do the observed cycles come from?

With their observations, Wang and his colleagues have come a little closer to the answer to this question. The galaxies are not evenly distributed throughout the universe. They form large piles, which are connected by elongated, thin structures. In these filaments, galaxies slowly flow towards larger galaxies, which sit like knots in a network of filaments.

No random movements

The team studied the motion of galaxies in thousands of strands. Effect: Galaxies do not move approximately, but follow a rotational motion around the axis of their filaments. These are the largest rotational movements ever discovered in the universe. “These thin cylinders are hundreds of millions of light-years long, but only a few million light-years in diameter, but these magnificent streams revolve,” says Noam Lipskind, a project initiator at Leibniz.

As the researchers’ observations show, the galaxy clusters are so large at its ends that the rotation of a fiber is strong. According to astronomers, this indicates that the cosmic rods not only play an important role in the formation and development of galaxies and galaxies, but also affect the rotational motions of the universe. Only recently have computer simulations given evidence of the rotation of fibers to create large structures in the universe. “It’s wonderful to make sure that interleaved threads spin in the real universe and in computer simulations,” Lipkind said.