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James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

(www.smithsonianmag.com)
352 points instagraham | 2 comments | 31 Mar 25 10:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.497s | source
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keyle ◴[31 Mar 25 10:59 UTC] No.43533500[source]▶
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?

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kmoser ◴[31 Mar 25 20:27 UTC] No.43539557[source]▶
Dumber question: would a galaxy that appears to spin clockwise appear to spin counter-clockwise when viewed from the other side? Does this imply that the real question is why galaxies' relative orientations seem to favor more spinning in one direction than the other?
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MoonGhost ◴[01 Apr 25 01:08 UTC] No.43541791[source]▶
> when viewed from the other side?

Nobody has done it so far. We have only theories and hypothesis.

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bbor ◴[01 Apr 25 02:10 UTC] No.43542108[source]▶
I'm not sure I understand this response -- basically all of cosmology involves theories based only on somewhat subjective interpretations of sensor data targeting far-off objects. So I don't necessarily disagree.

But what could possibly happen other than they act like all other physical objects do? It boggles the mind to think how broken physics would have to be to accommodate a second correspondence principle for the big-but-not-too-big scale...

I feel like maybe I'm misunderstanding your sentiment, because this seems like a basic shared fact: a clock anywhere in the universe is still a clock.

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1. reactordev ◴[01 Apr 25 03:53 UTC] No.43542667[source]▶
Except most theory can be observed where this one can’t until we find a wormhole to travel through or break c
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2. bbor ◴[01 Apr 25 14:56 UTC] No.43547552[source]▶
I guess I'm saying that we also can't observe any proof for the theory that anything exists beyond the solar system instead of a giant screen run by aliens built to trick us. I appreciate the empirical mindset, but taking it this far is not leaving room for the usual amount of parsimony-based reasoning!