Tendrils of galaxies up to hundreds of millions of light years long may be the largest spinning objects in the entire universe. Celestial bodies often spin, from planets to stars to galaxies However, giant clusters of galaxies often spin very slowly – if at all. So many researchers thought that is where the spinning might end on a cosmic scale, according to Noam Libeskind, a cosmologist at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany.
Previous research suggested that after the universe was born in the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago, much of the gas that makes up most of the known matter of the cosmos collapsed to form colossal sheets.
These sheets then broke apart to form the filaments of a vast cosmic web. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, scientists examined more than 17,000 filaments, analysing the velocity at which the galaxies making up these giant tubes moved within each tendril. The researchers found that the way in which these galaxies moved suggested they were rotating around the central axis of each filament.
The fastest the researchers saw galaxies whirl around the hollow centres of these tendrils was about 223,700 miles per hour. The scientists noted they do not suggest that every single filament in the universe spins, but that spinning filaments do seem to exist.