An international team of researchers says it has spotted the largest rotating structure of dark matter and gas-rich galaxies.
Astronomers have observed enormous filaments of galaxies tied together with dark matter — the stuff scientists believe makes up 85 percent of the total mass of the universe — stretching across unfathomably vast distances.
Some of these behemoth structures have been observed to spin in the same direction, a dazzling and mysterious cosmic dance stretching across tens of millions of light-years, and a tantalizing clue in our efforts to understand how galaxies, and eventually stars, are formed.
Now, an international team of researchers led by the University of Oxford says it has spotted the largest one of these rotating structures ever identified using data from South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope, an array of 64 linked satellite dishes.
As detailed in a study published this month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, they observed 14 galaxies arranged in a “razor-thin” string that measures roughly 5.
