Evidence for a Preferred Handedness of Spiral Galaxies
| dc.creator | Longo, Michael J. | |
| dc.date | 2009-04-16 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T13:05:05Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T13:05:05Z | |
| dc.description | In this article I extend an earlier study of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether the universe has an overall handedness. A preference for spiral galaxies in one sector of the sky to be left-handed or right-handed spirals would indicate a parity-violating asymmetry in the overall universe and a preferred axis. The previous study used 2616 spiral galaxies with redshifts <0.04 and identified handedness. The new study uses 15158 with redshifts <0.085 and obtains very similar results to the first with a signal exceeding 5 sigma, corresponding to a probability ~2.5x10-7 for occurring by chance. A similar asymmetry is seen in the Southern Galaxy spin catalog of Iye and Sugai. The axis of the dipole asymmetry lies at approx. (l, b) =(52 d, 68.5 d), roughly along that of our Galaxy and close to alignments observed in the WMAP cosmic microwave background distributions. | |
| dc.description | Increased data sample by factor of 7. Fit to dipole without prior assumptions or binning gives probability of 1.5x10-4 | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2529 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2529 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/227382 | |
| dc.subject | Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics of Galaxies | |
| dc.title | Evidence for a Preferred Handedness of Spiral Galaxies | |
| dc.type | text |