Observations about the directions in which galaxies turn have a head-spinning implication: our entire Universe might exist inside a black hole.
When Lior Shamir, a scientist at
Kansas State University, examined images from the James Webb Space Telescope
Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), he saw something quite unexpected.
The majority of the 263 galaxies he observed rotated in the same direction —
with two thirds spinning clockwise, Shamir reported in the Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society.
Why is this significant? In a random
universe, galaxy rotations should be roughly split in two directions. The fact
that this doesn’t appear to be the case in our Universe suggests other forces
we don’t completely understand may be at play.
“It is still not clear what causes
this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," Shamir
said in a press release. "One explanation is that the universe was born
rotating. That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology,
which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole. But
if the universe was indeed born rotating it means that the existing theories
about the cosmos are incomplete.”
The Black Hole Theory
Another surprising aspect of the
study was just how obvious the effect appeared. “The paper suggested that one
needn’t be an astrophysicist to identify the phenomenon. The difference is so
extreme that it can be noticed and inspected even by the unaided human eye,”
said the authors in the paper.
"There is no need for special
skills or knowledge to see that the numbers are different. With the power of
the James Webb Space Telescope, anyone can see it,” Shamir added in the
release.
Although the “Universe inside a
black hole” theory is tantalizing, there could also be a more pedestrian
explanation for the unexpected observations: some earlier measurements of our
Universe are incorrect — especially the speed at which the Milky Way galaxy
rotates.
A Light Mistake?
Since the Earth rotates around the
center of the Milky Way, researchers expect that the Doppler shift effect would
effect their observation of the galaxy's speed. That effect occurs when an
observer detects waves from a moving object. The most common example of the
effect is the way the sound of a train's horn appears to bend as the locomotive
thunders past an observer.
Light waves are subject to the same
effect, and, in this case could make light coming from galaxies rotating the
opposite of the Earth's spin appear brighter. If astronomers have miscalculated
the impact of this effect, or just plain gotten the Milky Way's rotational
velocity wrong (it’s been considered considerably slower in comparison to other
galaxies) they might need to rethink some basic assumptions.
Rethinking the Universe
“If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe,” Shamir said. "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.”
The bottom line, though, is that both explanations behind the uneven galactic rotations will require that astrophysicists give some aspects of our Universe a rethink.