James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

What “clockwise” means and why it’s surprising

  • Commenters stress that “clockwise” is observer‑dependent; from the opposite side the same galaxy spins counterclockwise.
  • The meaningful claim is statistical: we’d expect roughly a 50/50 split of spin directions for randomly oriented galaxies in an isotropic universe.
  • The underlying paper actually says ~60% of 263 JWST galaxies rotate opposite to the Milky Way, ~40% the same way, a ~3.39σ result.
  • Several note that determining spin by image morphology is hard and often subjective, hence the use of ML; that itself raises questions about bias.

Black‑hole cosmology and global rotation

  • Many latch onto the article’s suggestion that a preferred spin axis could mean our universe is inside a spinning black hole, inheriting its angular momentum.
  • There is extended discussion of what “inside a black hole” means (event horizon vs singularity, singularity as “in the future,” lack of stable orbits inside) and whether this is compatible with what we observe.
  • Others point out that this is a speculative idea with no direct evidence and risks infinite regress (“turtles all the way down” with nested universes/black holes).

Alternative and more mundane explanations

  • Another proposed explanation in the article: miscalibrated assumptions about the Milky Way’s motion and rotation, producing selection or brightness biases (via Doppler/relativistic beaming).
  • People debate whether such effects can really change the total brightness of a whole galaxy enough to explain a ~60/40 split.
  • Some suggest local structure (e.g., supercluster dynamics) or early‑universe asymmetries (quasars, magnetic fields, turbulence) as more plausible than black‑hole cosmology.

Skepticism about the result and methodology

  • Multiple commenters flag that 263 galaxies from a tiny sky patch is a very small sample, and 3σ is modest; many expect the effect may vanish with more data.
  • Others cite follow‑up work by astronomers that found no significant global spin anisotropy and critique similar past claims by the same solo (non‑astronomer) author as inconsistent or methodologically weak.
  • Overall sentiment: interesting anomaly if real, but current evidence is thin and likely over‑hyped by the popular article.

Broader cosmological and philosophical threads

  • Long side discussions cover:
    • Observable vs entire universe, light cones, expanding space, and why every observer is “at the center” of their observable sphere.
    • The cosmological and Copernican principles (no preferred places or directions) and how repeated asymmetries (matter–antimatter, molecular chirality, spin bias) might challenge them.
    • Whether unobservable regions “exist” in a scientific sense, and the limits of testability in modern cosmology.