Galactic rotation

[DX]

I am doing some research for a book and I hope someone here can help
me with a question. What is the ratio of the number of galaxies
rotating clockwise vs anti-clockwise relative to some arbitrary
vector? I will post a summary of answers.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

@a

[Kent Paul Dolan]

DX <a...@divisionx.com> wrote:

> I am doing some research for a book and I hope
> someone here can help me with a question. What is
> the ratio of the number of galaxies rotating
> clockwise vs anti-clockwise relative to some
> arbitrary vector? I will post a summary of
> answers.

As I understand it, nominally, 1::1, a requirement
for the general belief that the universe is
isotropic. The Galaxy Zoo project
(http://www.galaxyzoo.org), which attempted to count
that ratio directly, as seen from Earth, seemed to
find otherwise, and got a lot of excitement out of
that preliminary indication of possible anisotropy,
but after careful bias testing of the same group of
classifier volunteers, the result proved to be
"classifier-person bias" rather than real universe
bias.

Had the anisotropy proved real, quite a bit of
astrophysics / cosmology theory would have needed
revision, apparently.

xanthian.

[Kent Paul Dolan]

DX wrote:

> I am doing some research for a book and I hope
> someone here can help me with a question. What is
> the ratio of the number of galaxies rotating
> clockwise vs anti-clockwise relative to some
> arbitrary vector? I will post a summary of
> answers.

To put a little better answer in place than my prior
amateur summary, there is now (as of 2008/03/27) a
published analysis from the Galaxy Zoo project:

"We conclude that the Galaxy Zoo spin results are
consistent with statistical isotropy."

Read the whole story here:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.3247v2.pdf

xanthian.