Antigravity Research

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">"Based on conclusions from over one-hundred-thousand GalaxyZoo volunteers as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project, most galaxies seem to be rotating counterclockwise in relation to the Earth. Astronomers wonder why?"<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The wire story provides no details and no sources. None of the relevant web sites are carrying any such news story. I wouldn't be too surprised by that if the story made sense. But how do the participants tell which way a galaxy is rotating? Assuming that spectra are provided so that radial velocities are available, that only tells us that a galaxy IS rotating. But direction requires a reference. Which way is clockwise and which is counterclockwise? It depends on which side one views from. Astronomers sometimes DEFINE north as the pole from which the rotation appears counterclockwise. And "relative to Earth"? The photos we take may each have arbitrary orientation, depending on which Earth-hemisphere they were taken in and whether the photo was of an area above or below the pole. Earth's orientation is also arbitrary with respect to the Galaxy, to say nothing of the universe.

No details (e.g., what percentage is "most"?), no sources, no definitions or explanations. Can any of you find where this story originated? If it cannot be traced to a source, I'd assume an internet hoax. -|Tom|-

Hi Tom, You certainly make some valid points. The data is from: www.galaxyzoo.org/ They are currently cataloguing galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. From reading through the forum it appears that they are close to releasing a full report of findings. This non-documented leaked story may indicate preliminary findings since I did manage to find some statements to the fact that less CW galaxies were counted.

Plasma formations may split apart when galaxies are formed similar to binary star systems which then create an opposing rotation. Space weather can generate all sorts of circumstances for changing rotation orientations. What is most important is finding the cause for galaxy formation in the first place. My best guess is that the process operates similar to how solar systems are created. What are the statistics for solar system Counter Clockwise and Clockwise rotations in Milky Way Galaxy? Confussing the matter even more is the recent discovery of clockwise and counter clockwise ring motions around our galaxy. Again we see that there must be outside influences from greater Universe circulations creating these extraneous ring motions that oppose the actual directional flow of the galaxy itself---indicating that there are large scale rotations in Universe even if we cannot see them because they may operate outside of this spectrum. John

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by cosmicsurfer</i>
<br />I did manage to find some statements to the fact that less CW galaxies were counted.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">If the only thing being measured is the direction of the spiral arms on the sky (as the instructions to volunteers indicate), that contains much less information than a measure of rotation. Moreover, although they are rare, there are known cases where a galaxy has spiral arms pointing in both directions, and at least one known case where the rotation is opposite to that inferred from the pointing direction of the spiral arms.

But mainly, this "less CW" result (by an unspecified percentage) is not an indication of a preferred rotation direction for galaxies, and is probably only an indication of biases in the completeness of the survey. Consider that galaxies in clusters have show random orientations. Better yet, consider the most extreme rotation bias, that all galaxies rotate in exactly the same direction, and all have parallel orientation. From our vantage point, we would still see all galaxies in one direction on the sky with CW spiral arms, and all galaxies in the opposite direction with CCW spiral arms. Unbiased counts over the whole sky would still be 50-50.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">What are the statistics for solar system Counter Clockwise and Clockwise rotations in Milky Way Galaxy?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">We can't see exoplanets, just changes in the radial velocity or brightness of their parent star. So we have no idea which way the exoplanets are moving. But what difference would it make anyway? Planets don't "point" the way spiral arms do. Which way does our solar system rotate? CCW when viewed from above, CW when viewed from below. But there is no indicator for "handedness". -|Tom|-

Hi Tom, After going through many pictures of galactic structures there is almost every conceivable formation possible out there. Some galactic arms do tilt 90 degrees and do infact appear to wrap back around. Preference of CCW or CW is not an indication of overall motion, and the factors determining galactic arms direction of motion may have more to do with the morphology of the creational processes involved at time of birth of that system then large scale motions.

If visible universe is in motion as part of a larger MEGA structure, because the entire space is moving as a whole unit it would be difficult to see this motion. Plus, the Galaxies might all look to be similar ages if "we" were located half way from center to the outer edges of rotation. John

Intriguing this, the research seems to be centred on observations made by Prof. Michael Longo, a physicist at Fermilab. They want to take a look at one million galaxies to see if they are biased towards anti clockwise rotation.

Now this cannot come cheap, so who's paying for it? Why is there no papers to explain how they are going to go about the number crunching? They have to exist, to get funding.

Look out in any direction and there should be a fifty fifty distribution of CW and ACW rotations. We can't say it would differ if we were at the "edge" or just off "centre," it should be fifty fifty to any observer.

We must assume that they are into Einstein and also the big bang. Doing statistical analysis with Hamiltonians' sounds like a world of pain. What are they after? My best guess is that this guy Longo has suggested areas of differing expansion of the big bang.

I wish I had the guy's agent, he gets money for studies, and doesn't have to explain anything. [8D][]

Here is one report from Michael Lango with his results, which are at least quantitative: aps.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0703325 -|Tom|-

ABSTRACT: In this article I study the distribution of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether the universe has an overall handedness. A preference for spiral galaxies in one sector of the sky to be left-handed or right-handed spirals would indicate a preferred handedness. The SDSS data show a strong signal for such an asymmetry with a probability of occurring by chance ~3.0 x 10-4. The asymmetry axis is at (RA,Dec) ~(202d,25d) with an uncertainty ~15d. The axis appears to be correlated with that of the quadrupole and octopole moments in the WMAP microwave sky survey, an unlikely alignment that has been dubbed "the axis of evil". Our Galaxy is aligned with its spin axis within 8.4d of this spiral axis.

[Elsewhere, he indicates the "handedness" difference is about 8%.]