We’re taught that our universe is the largest thing we can possibly conceive of, ever expanding into something even bigger. But what if our reality is just a small part of something much more vast? It’s a mind-bending proposition, given that it’s difficult to even imagine what’s beyond Earth, but some striking science suggests that we should reconsider the evidence.

If our universe were truly random, we could expect half of the galaxies to rotate one way, and the other half in the opposite direction—but that isn’t the case. Two-thirds of observed galaxies spin counterclockwise. To some scientists, this preferred direction supports a theory called black hole cosmology, or the idea that our universe was born inside of a black hole nested in a larger parent universe. Should this be true, it means that baby universes could exist inside of our own, and it could be possible to enter them under the right circumstances.

The discovery of the galaxy asymmetry dates back to 2011, when the late physicist Michael J. Longo, PhD, published an interesting paper in Physics Letters B. His research was based on an analysis of 15,158 spiral galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico. Longo found that spiral galaxies in one sector of the sky appeared to have a preferred direction of rotation, indicating there may be an asymmetry in how galaxies present in the universe. Last year, scientists confirmed the asymmetry in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Lior Shamir, PhD—a data scientist and professor at Kansas State University—led the 2025 study. He declined requests for comment.