NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has made a puzzling observation that challenges our understanding of the universe. A recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society found that most galaxies in the deep universe rotate in the same direction, with two thirds rotating clockwise and one third counterclockwise.
The analysis was conducted using images from the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, which revealed this unexpected pattern. Dr. Lior Shamir, a researcher at Kansas State University, believes that anyone can see this difference in rotation without needing specialized skills or knowledge.
In contrast, it’s expected that in a random universe, galaxies would rotate in opposite directions, making this finding unusual and worthy of further investigation. Shamir proposes two possible explanations for this phenomenon: either the universe was born rotating, which could mean existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete, or the Doppler shift effect caused by the Earth’s rotation around the Milky Way galaxy might be influencing the observations.
The latter explanation suggests that re-calibrating distance measurements in the deep universe could help resolve several unsolved questions in cosmology, including differences in expansion rates and the ages of large galaxies.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-puzzling-jwst-galaxies-deep-universe.html