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James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

(www.smithsonianmag.com)
352 points instagraham | 1 comments | 31 Mar 25 10:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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worldsayshi ◴[31 Mar 25 11:02 UTC] No.43533522[source]▶
Clockwise relative to what? Does the universe have an "upwards" direction?

Or is it just relative to all the other galaxies?

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andrewaylett ◴[31 Mar 25 11:11 UTC] No.43533588[source]▶
Clockwise relative to our viewpoint, while we would expect that we'd see an equal number rotating in either direction no matter which way we looked or where we were looking from.
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MichaelZuo ◴[31 Mar 25 11:19 UTC] No.43533651[source]▶
How does that follow?

I imagine there was already a preferred spin of gases immediately after the big bang, just due to random chance, so why wouldn’t that be preserved more or less?

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1. soulofmischief ◴[31 Mar 25 11:29 UTC] No.43533713[source]▶
It's still of great interest to understand why exactly symmetry broke, and how this news might affect the cosmological principle.