Baffling rows of spiral galaxies that prefer to spin in one direction could have profound implications for our understanding of the cosmos
It is the kind of mystery that could keep a cosmologist up at night: the discovery of a non-random pattern in the structure of the universe. Now fresh evidence for an "axis of asymmetry", along which many more spiral galaxies seem to spin one way than the other, threatens to undermine our understanding of the cosmos.
The first hint of such an axis emerged last year in a survey of about 15,000 spiral galaxies, which have a spin that is either left or right-handed (New Scientist, 17 October 2011, p 44).
The new evidence comes from a survey with more than 10 times as many galaxies, stretching even deeper into space. It is the work of a different scientist using a different technique.
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