Physics World
By Isabelle Dume
July 1, 2021The universe is full of spinning objects. Galaxies, the stars within galaxies, the Earth, the Earth around the Sun, the Moon around the Earth – all rotate around an axis. An international team of astronomers has now added to this list by uncovering evidence that cosmic filaments – tendrils of matter that stretch across hundreds of millions of light years – are also spinning. Rotation on such gigantic scales has never been observed before and the new finding could help explain why galaxies (and indeed every other structure in space) are so prone to rotating.