{"id":226732,"date":"2025-12-09T01:22:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/astronomers-spot-one-of-the-largest-spinning-structures-ever-found-in"},"modified":"2025-12-09T01:22:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:22:26","slug":"astronomers-spot-one-of-the-largest-spinning-structures-ever-found-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/astronomers-spot-one-of-the-largest-spinning-structures-ever-found-in","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers spot one of the largest spinning structures ever found in"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-spot-one-of-the-largest-spinning-structures-ever-found-in.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An international team led by the University of Oxford has identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a \u2018razor-thin\u2019 string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament, 140 million light-years away. The findings, published today in <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/article-lookup\/doi\/10.1093\/mnras\/staf2005\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em><\/a>, could offer valuable new insights into how galaxies formed in the early Universe.<\/p>\n<p>Cosmic filaments are the largest known structures in the Universe: vast, thread-like formations of galaxies and dark matter that form a cosmic scaffolding. They also act as \u2018highways\u2019 along which matter and momentum flow into galaxies. Nearby filaments containing many galaxies spinning in the same direction-and where the whole structure appears to be rotating \u2013 are ideal systems to explore how galaxies gained the spin and gas they have today. They can also provide a way to test theories about how cosmic rotation builds up over tens of millions of light-years.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What makes this structure exceptional is not just its size, but the combination of spin alignment and rotational motion. You can liken it to the teacups ride at a theme park. Each galaxy is like a spinning teacup, but the whole platform-the cosmic filament-is rotating too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An international team led by the University of Oxford has identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a \u2018razor-thin\u2019 string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament, 140 million light-years away. The findings, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could offer valuable new insights into how galaxies [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}