[NewCandle] Evidence for a Preferred Handedness of Spiral Galaxies

[Keith Nagel]

New paper by Michael Longo, clearly something of interest
to readers of this list.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2529

Abstract
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 In this article I extend an earlier study of spiral galaxies
 in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether
 the universe has an overall handedness. A preference for spiral
 galaxies in one sector of the sky to be left-handed or
 right-handed spirals would indicate a parity-violating asymmetry
 in the overall universe and a preferred axis. The previous study
 used 2616 spiral galaxies with redshifts <0.04 and identified
 handedness. The new study uses 15158 with redshifts <0.085 and
 obtains very similar results to the first with a signal exceeding
 5 sigma, corresponding to a probability ~2.5x10-7 for occurring
 by chance. A similar asymmetry is seen in the Southern Galaxy
 spin catalog of Iye and Sugai. The axis of the dipole asymmetry
 lies at approx. (l, b) =(52 d, 68.5 d), roughly along that of
 our Galaxy and close to alignments observed in the WMAP cosmic
 microwave background distributions.