Original spin: Was the universe born whirling? - space - 17 October 2011 - New Scientist

Original spin: Was the universe born whirling?: All other things being equal, you would have expected these galaxies generally to be spinning in random directions, according to local conditions when they formed. And that indeed was the case. In most sectors of the northern sky, equal numbers of galaxies were rotating to the right, or clockwise, and to the left, anticlockwise. But along one direction, at about 10 degrees to our own galaxy's spin axis, there were more left-handed spirals than right-handed ones...
"If this asymmetry is real, it means the universe has a net angular momentum..."
It is too early for him to have incorporated the details of the galaxy asymmetry into his work explicitly, but he sees a suggestive thread: an initially spinning universe brought on a parity-violating asymmetry in gravity that allowed matter to triumph over its antimatter rival. And that process left two marks behind: the axis of evil in the cosmic background radiation, and the inconspicuous alignment of galaxies that Longo has spotted.

Weak nuclear force is less weak

Weak nuclear force is less weak: At the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland a dedicated proton beam was used to create muons amid collisions with a graphite target.
Researchers then gathered a fine spray of muons, directed them and stopped them in their own metal target which was surrounded by a detector that could track the muons' demise. The decay of over 2 trillion muons provided the best yet value for the average muon lifetime. It comes out to 2.1969803 microseconds.

Physicists to discuss largest parity violation, other adventures in table-top physics

Physicists to discuss largest parity violation, other adventures in table-top physics: Parity violation, the property by which nature tells left from right, was discovered first in the 1950s by watching the decay of cobalt nuclei. The weak nuclear force, unlike the other known forces of nature, brings about reactions that would look different when observed in a mirror. Years later, parity violation was observed in atoms. Now, Budker uses atoms of the rare Earth element ytterbium to observe the largest extent of parity violation ever seen in atoms, larger by a factor of 100 compared to previous tests. His goal is to improve the precision of this measurement so that researchers could begin to use the parity-violating process to help measure the distribution of neutrons in nuclei.