![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/the-universe-could-be.jpg\" "\\"The")
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The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, is a spiral galaxy located 31 million light-years away. Credit: NASA<\/p>\n
A new study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by researchers including Istv\u00e1n Szapudi of the University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa Institute for Astronomy suggests the universe may rotate<\/a>\u2014just extremely slowly. The finding could help solve one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles.<\/p>\n “To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, who famously said ‘panta rhei’ (everything moves), we thought that perhaps panta kykloutai\u2014everything turns,” said Szapudi.<\/p>\n Current models say the universe<\/a> expands evenly in all directions, with no sign of rotation. This idea fits most of what astronomers observe. But it doesn’t explain the so-called Hubble tension\u2014a long-standing disagreement between two ways of measuring how fast the universe is expanding.<\/p>\n Supernovae, Big Bang<\/p>\n One method looks at distant exploding stars or supernovae<\/a>, to measure the distances to galaxies, and gives an expansion rate<\/a> for the universe throughout the past few billion years. The other method uses the relic radiation from the Big Bang and gives the expansion rate of the very early universe, about 13 billion years ago. Each gives a different value for the expansion rate.<\/p>\n Szapudi’s team developed a mathematical model of the universe. First, it followed standard rules. Then they added a tiny amount of rotation. That small change made a big difference.<\/p>\n “Much to our surprise, we found that our model with rotation resolves the paradox without contradicting current astronomical measurements. Even better, it is compatible with other models that assume rotation. Therefore, perhaps, everything really does turn. Or, panta kykloutai,” noted Szapudi.<\/p>\n Their model suggests the universe could rotate once every 500 billion years\u2014too slow to detect easily, but enough to affect how space expands over time.<\/p>\n The idea doesn’t break any known laws of physics. It might also explain why measurements of the universe’s growth don’t quite agree.<\/p>\n The next step is turning the theory into a full computer model\u2014and finding ways to spot signs of this slow cosmic spin.<\/p>\n More information:<\/strong> \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tProvided by \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCitation<\/strong>: \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBal\u00e1zs Endre Szigeti et al, Can rotation solve the Hubble Puzzle?, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2025). DOI: 10.1093\/mnras\/staf446<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa<\/a>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA slowly spinning universe could solve the Hubble tension (2025, April 14)
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tretrieved 15 April 2025
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfrom https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-04-slowly-universe-hubble-tension.html\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, is a spiral galaxy located 31 million light-years away. Credit: NASA A new study…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3845],"tags":[75,76,74,71,70,72,53,73,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-21778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-materials","9":"tag-nanotech","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-physics-news","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-science-news","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-technology-news","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114341594034265449","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}