Astronomers have found that the largest structures in the universe spin, making twister-like strings of galaxies and dark matter in the cosmic web.

Like giant cosmic twisters, filaments of the cosmic web slowly spin around their own axis while funneling matter into galaxy clusters. These humongous structures are made of galaxies, gas, and dark matter and can measure up to hundreds of millions of light-years. And they are now the largest structures in the universe that are known to rotate.

artists impression of purple filament growing out of bright galaxy cluster to form a web
Artist’s impression of cosmic filaments: huge bridges of galaxies and dark matter connect clusters of galaxies to each other. Galaxies are funnelled on corkscrew like orbits towards and into large clusters that sit at their ends. Their light appears blue-shifted when they move towards us, and red-shifted when they move away.
Credit: AIP/ A. Khalatyan/ J. Fohlmeister

A team led by Peng Wang (Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Germany) found evidence for these filaments’ spin by studying more than 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In a June 14th paper published in Nature Astronomy, the team concludes that the results “are consistent with the detection of a signal one would expect if filaments rotated.”

Much of the universe spins — stars, galaxies, and clusters. But astronomers still don’t understand if and how spins on smaller scales connect to those on (much) larger scales. “The spin of intergalactic filaments is a key piece of the puzzle,” comments theorist Miguel Aragon-Calvo (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Team member Noam Libeskind (AIP) said in a press statement, “There must be an as yet unknown physical mechanism responsible for torquing these objects.”

Wang, Libeskind, and their Estonian and Chinese colleagues used an algorithm to identify linear structures in the distribution of galaxies in clusters. By stacking data on more than 17,000 of these filaments, they found evidence that galaxies on one side of a filament “spine” generally have a higher redshift (a measure of the galaxies' radial velocity toward or away from Earth) than galaxies on the other side. These motion asymmetries suggest that galaxies are rotating around filament axes with velocities up to 100 kilometers per second (200,000 mph). (That may sound fast, but it’s generally much too slow to complete one “orbit” around the filament within the present age of the universe).

According to popular cosmological models, gravity has concentrated matter (both visible and dark) into thin sheets and elongated filaments. There’s some observational evidence of tenuous gas and dark matter in this cosmic web, though it’s still pretty scarce. However, the intricate three-dimensional structure shows up clearly in the distribution of galaxies that formed out of this raw material. Computer simulations and velocity measurements indicate that dark matter, gas and galaxies flow toward the still-growing clusters at the nodes where filaments meet.

Aragon-Calvo was part of a team that recently found indications of filament spin in the Millennium Simulation — a dark-matter-only simulation of cosmic structure growth. “Wang and his colleagues did a great job uncovering a signal that has been hiding in plain sight,” he says. “This is a direct confirmation of our prediction.”

It is not yet known how the corkscrew-like motions of galaxies in the cosmic web — the combination of filament spin and funneling — will influence the rotation of smaller structures, like galaxy clusters. Interestingly, the observed motion asymmetry is stronger in filaments that connect more massive clusters, which suggests the clusters affect the filaments’ behavior. The researchers of the new study hope that future work may also reveal at which stage in structure formation filaments spin up, and how this affects the galaxies they contain.

According to Aragon-Calvo, theory suggests that matter in the newborn universe should not exhibit any non-random, systematic rotation. “If we were to find signatures of primordial vorticity, this could point to new processes or even new physics,” he says.

Comments


Image of Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson

June 16, 2021 at 12:57 pm

While the results are a surprise, it is very easy to imagine the threads acquiring a spin as they collapse. Most gravitational systems spin up as they collapse. All it requires is some non-symmetry, which is easy to come by in nature.

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Andrew James

June 16, 2021 at 8:57 pm

Electric universe supporters are gonna love this story.

Also the biggest issue is if tidal torques that create the twisted spirals can be generated within the age of the Universe. e.g. If the Milky Way rotates once every 250 million years or so, in 13 billion years it has had only 13x5 or 65 times. Galaxy cluster would have even less rotations to do this and form twisted spirals. If true then the degree of twisting should decrease with distance.

Another problem is if filaments were rotating to form a spiral, for it to exist there would need to be a preferential handedness or rotational direction along the filament axis. If true, then the origin can be traced back to the time when galaxies formed, and when the angular momentum was generated created by the collapsing protogalaxy nebulae. One of the biggest problems with cosmology is understanding how galaxies formed is such a short period of time and then to form the galaxy structures we see today. This story might give clues to this process.

I have a suspicion that the higher density of dark matter in the early universe might have accelerated and enhanced the formation process, clumping matter into filaments then immediately generating the galaxy structures within those filaments. While this is speculative, this might at least explain the origin of these rotational effects.

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Deryk Houston

August 7, 2021 at 3:36 pm

Or..... the universe might be much much older than it is generally believed. Cosmologists, generally, refuse to consider anything that might damge the reputation of their baby....The Big Bang theory....even when it is in a crisis and so many discoveries point to the need for a completely new idea.
It must be heartbreaking to discover that everything you have invested in and believed in and spouted off as unbreakable fact....is probably all wrong.

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Deryk Houston

October 5, 2021 at 4:44 pm

I'm left wondering: Does the light from the other galaxies in other strands travel across the open void of space between the strands, to our galaxy in our strand or does that light come to us by travelling along the strands...taking the shortest path through the web of strands?
I know this might sound crazy....but do we know for sure which way the light comes to us. Do we know how wide these strands are? (I'm not talking about the length of each strand)

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