Galactic 'axis of asymmetry' threatens cosmic order - New Scientist - New Scientist

Galactic 'axis of asymmetry' threatens cosmic order: In most directions, Longo found an even spread of right and left-handed galaxies. But when he looked along a line about 25 degrees off from the direction of the Milky Way's north pole - a cosmic reference point that sits directly above the centre of our galaxy - he found more left-handed spirals than right-handed ones...
Now, Lior Shamir of the Lawrence Technological University at Southfield, Michigan, has automated the process and looked deeper into space. His software classified the handedness of almost 250,000 spiral galaxies up to 3.4 billion light years away, which were surveyed by SDSS and another project called the Galaxy Zoo...

This time, though, the axis of asymmetry pointed about 60 degrees to the other side of the Milky Way's north pole (see diagram). Despite being separated by 85 degrees, both axes have such large uncertainties that they could be aspects of the same axis.
"The observation is so strange that it's difficult to interpret its meaning," says Shamir. "A pattern in the structure of the universe at such a large scale is not something that we expect to see."

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Could Dark Matter Not Matter?

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Could Dark Matter Not Matter?  ...Carati has come along with a seemingly implausible idea that the rotational curves of spiral galaxies could be explained by the gravitational influence of faraway matter, without needing to appeal to dark matter at all.


Conceptually the idea makes little sense. Positioning gravitationally significant mass outside of the orbit of stars might draw them out into wider orbits, but it’s difficult to see why this would add to their orbital velocity. Drawing an object into a wider orbit should result in it taking longer to orbit the galaxy since it will have more circumference to cover. What we generally see in spiral galaxies is that the outer stars orbit the galaxy within much the same time period as more inward stars.

But although the proposed mechanism seems a little implausible, what is remarkable about Carati’s claim is that the math apparently deliver galactic rotation curves that closely fit the observed values of at least four known galaxies. Indeed, the math delivers an extraordinarily close fit.

A new way to measure the expansion of the universe

A new way to measure the expansion of the universe: By analysing light coming from a distant galaxy, the speed and direction of that galaxy can be easily measured. Determining the galaxy's distance from Earth is much more difficult. Until now, this has been done by observing the brightness of individual objects within the galaxy and using what we know about the object to calculate how far away the galaxy must be.
This approach to measuring a galaxy's distance from Earth is based on some well-established assumptions but is prone to systematic errors...
Galaxies are not spread evenly through space, but are clustered. Using a measurement of the clustering of the galaxies surveyed, plus other information derived from observations of the early Universe, Mr Beutler has measured the Hubble constant with an uncertainly of less than 5%.*

Galaxy sized twist in time pulls violating particles back into line

Galaxy sized twist in time pulls violating particles back into line: Dr Hadley’s paper... suggests that researchers have neglected the significant impact of the rotation of our Galaxy on the pattern of how sub atomic particles breakdown...
There is a clear left right asymmetry in weak interactions and a much smaller CP violation in Kaon systems. These have been measured but never explained. This research suggests that the experimental results in our laboratories are a consequence of galactic rotation twisting our local space time. If that is shown to be correct then nature would be fundamentally symmetric after all.

Largest cosmic structures 'too big' for theories - space - 21 June 2011 - New Scientist

Largest cosmic structures 'too big' for theories: Shaun Thomas of University College London (UCL), and colleagues have found aggregations of galaxies stretching for more than 3 billion light years. The hyperclusters are not very sharply defined, with only a couple of per cent variation in density from place to place, but even that density contrast is twice what theory predicts.

Milky Way Is Warped, Like a Beer Bottle Cap - Technology Review

Milky Way Is Warped, Like a Beer Bottle Cap - Technology Review: The new evidence that Dame and Thaddeus have accumulated shows the existence of a new arm on the other side of the Milky Way, but further from the centre than we are. The new arm is 18 kpc long and so stretches some 50 degrees across the sky...
But why has it taken astronomers so long to find the end of this arm? The reason, says Dame and Thaddeus, is that this arm is bent. Sot it's not in the galactic plane but slightly above it.

Cosmic magnetic fields

Cosmic magnetic fields: •Optical light is partly polarised by the presence of dust grains which are drawn into a particular orientation by a magnetic field and then only let through light in a certain plane.
•At a larger scale, Faraday rotation comes into play, where the plane of already polarised light is rotated in the presence of a magnetic field.
•There’s also Zeeman splitting, where spectral lines – which normally identify the presence of elements such as hydrogen – may become split in light that has passed through a magnetic field.

Cosmos At Least 250x Bigger Than Visible Universe, Say Cosmologists� - Technology Review

Cosmos At Least 250x Bigger Than Visible Universe, Say Cosmologists� - Technology Review: "The breakthrough that Vardanyan and pals have made is to find a way to average the results of all the data in the simplest possible way. The technique they use is called Bayesian model averaging and it is much more sophisticated than the usual curve fitting that scientists often use to explain their data...

Instead of asking how well the model fits the data, its asks a different question: given the data, how likely is the model to be correct. This approach is automatically biased against complex models--it's a kind of statistical Occam's razor.

Shining new light on dark energy with galaxy clusters

Shining new light on dark energy with galaxy clusters: "In its first season, the ACT team identified 23 clusters, approximately half of which were previously unknown. The discovery of new clusters highlights the power of CMB observations to spot extremely distant galaxy clusters. Once the galaxy clusters are discovered, optical wavelength observations are used to determine their distance. Sehgal led the effort to analyze the new data in order to distinguish between different competing dark energy theories.
'Each model for dark energy makes a prediction that you should see this many clusters, with this particular mass, this particular distance away from us,' Sehgal said."

Hidden in Plain Sight: Researchers Find Galaxy-Scale Bubbles Extending from the Milky Way: Scientific American

Hidden in Plain Sight: Researchers Find Galaxy-Scale Bubbles Extending from the Milky Way: Scientific American: Spergel notes that much astrophysical work focuses on filtering out the foreground of Milky Way structures to see into the distant universe. "For most cosmologists our galaxy is an enormous nuisance," he says. "This is one of those instances where one scientist's foreground and garbage is another scientist's field of study."

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Milky Way Is Square, According To New Galactic Map

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Milky Way Is Square, According To New Galactic Map: One conclusion is that the Milky Way has an additional spiral arm, not seen in previous surveys of the galaxy. The new arm is about 30,000 light years from the galactic core at a longitude of between 80 and 140 degrees.

But a bigger surprise is their conclusion that some of the arms in the Milky Way are not curved in the traditional way, but are straight instead. This gives the Milky Way a distinctly squarish look.

Cosmic magnetic field strength measured

Hints of weak magnetism between galaxies may provide information about early universe

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57838/title/Cosmic_magnetic_field_strength_measured