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LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE

Spinning around

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 742–743 (2021)Cite this article

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The measured blue and redshifts of galaxies within filaments in the local Universe are consistent with the large-scale flow of matter within walls, but they may also point to evidence for their rotation.

Spin is ubiquitous in the Universe. From stars, through planets, to galaxies and galaxy clusters, the largest known gravitationally bound structures, typically a few millions of light years across, most cosmological structures across a wide range of scales rotate. But what are the largest spinning objects in the Universe? Writing in Nature Astronomy, Peng Wang and collaborators1 present the first observational evidence that filaments of galaxies, structures of matter hundreds of millions of light years across, are themselves spinning. This would make them the largest observed objects known to have angular momentum.

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Fig. 1: An illustration of the cosmic web filaments tracing the matter distribution in a numerical simulation.

Christophe Pichon.

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  1. Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Marseille, France

    Katarina Kraljic

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  1. Katarina Kraljic
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Correspondence to Katarina Kraljic.

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Kraljic, K. Spinning around. Nat Astron 5, 742–743 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01403-2

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