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James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#91
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.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#92

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.

This was also my thought, since selection bias seemed like a good explanation as well. The survey only covers 220 square arcminutes out of a total of about 148 million. Interesting data point though, definitely seems like something that one should measure!

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following this news for the past couple of weeks-- in essence your statement is what they are hypothesizing, and that the "something at the center that unites the two poles" might be that we are within a black hole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology for the curious.

It was my understanding that if two black holes collide, they just form a bigger black hole, but we know there's a black hole in our universe, which then would mean that there's a black hole inside of a black hole that did not merge with the parent black hole, right? Is that something that is considered possible?

The inner black hole did not come from the outside, it formed inside and if i had to guess, it is stuck in the inside together with all the other matter, unable to interact with the outside of the outer black hole.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#94
post #9

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?

https://mapoftheuniverse.net

While we don't believe we're the center of the universe, I believe we're limited by instrumentation to determine its size. Best guess now is 100B LY in diameter.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was my understanding that if two black holes collide, they just form a bigger black hole, but we know there's a black hole in our universe, which then would mean that there's a black hole inside of a black hole that did not merge with the parent black hole, right? Is that something that is considered possible?

The inner black hole did not come from the outside, it formed inside and if i had to guess, it is stuck in the inside together with all the other matter, unable to interact with the outside of the outer black hole.

Just thinking about this infinite recursion gives me the mental equivalent of a stack overflow.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#97
post #9

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?

My own dumb question … How does cyclones/hurricanes relate to being “on one of two ‘poles’”? Do you mean hemisphere?

If all of the galaxies we see rotate the same way, are we “looking down” from a pole and seeing only those with the same rotation we have, as opposed to a more equatorial view that would be evenly split.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#98
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,”

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#99
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

Re: James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

#100
post #9

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?

https://mapoftheuniverse.net While we don't believe we're the center of the universe, I believe we're limited by instrumentation to determine its size. Best guess now is 100B LY in diameter.

100B LY is a little bit larger than the observable universe.

But the observable universe is a fraction of the whole thing. The "best guess" right now is that the total universe is flat and has no end.

If it's bounded, 100B LY is orders of magnitude below the most conservative lower-bound estimates, which I believe start at around 300-500x that size. (With huge error bars on all sides.)

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