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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: 0.224s | source
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over_bridge ◴[31 Mar 25 11:22 UTC] No.43533669[source]▶
Seems like we've got a few of these imbalances now where you'd expect 50:50 but instead it's skewed to one side where nature had a different idea

Matter-antimatter ratio

Left vs right handed molecules

Now galaxy spin directions

Maybe there are others I missed too

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albertzeyer ◴[31 Mar 25 11:30 UTC] No.43533727[source]▶
For the matter-antimatter ratio, you would not expect 50:50, or would you? Because 50:50 would be a highly unstable system? In any case, you would expect that unstable states would be highly unlikely, and it would converge into a stable state.

I'm not sure about the other examples. But maybe it's a similar reason that it is not a 50:50 ratio?

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1. mystified5016 ◴[31 Mar 25 16:33 UTC] No.43536920[source]▶
You would expect a 50/50 ratio because when energy is converted into matter, it's typically in the form of matter/antimatter pairs.

There's nothing special about matter or antimatter. Same energy, just opposite charge. All else being equal, they should be created in equal amounts. As far as we're aware, there is no special property that would make the universe preferentially create more matter than antimatter.

There's also no requirement that the configuration of matter and antimatter be "stable" for whatever definition you want to apply. The only rule is that conserved quantities stay conserved.