More Surprising Results from JWST: Most Galaxies Rotate Clockwise

There are an estimated 200 billion galaxies in our universe, and this new study surveyed 263 of them to determine the direction that the galaxies rotate. And the result? Two-thirds rotate clockwise, a problem for big bang cosmology because:

[Evolutionary] astronomers have long posited that galaxies should be evenly split between rotating in one direction or the other. . . This stems from the idea that we live in an “isotropic” universe, which means that the universe looks roughly the same in every direction. By extension, galaxies shouldn’t have a preferred direction of spin from our perspective.

And yet, they do, at least based on this new study (though our astronomer, Dr. Danny Faulkner, says the results are likely to be disputed and may not be accurate). But we should note that the results of this study aren’t really “new”—the study lists papers going back to 1985 that report on this asymmetry of rotation. What is new is:

• the number of galaxies they were able to survey,
• how far away those galaxies are,
• and the size of the asymmetry.

What was really surprising was that the deeper you go into space, the more pronounced this asymmetry gets, if the conclusion of the study is accurate.

The big bang is so “plastic” that it can always be tweaked to explain everything and anything—which means that it doesn’t actually explain anything!

So what does that mean for the big bang model? Well, all that will happen is the model will be tweaked . . . again. You see, the big bang is so “plastic” that it can always be tweaked to explain everything and anything—which means that it doesn’t actually explain anything! That’s because it is a belief about the past and not based on observational science.

How might it be tweaked? Well, the article gave two possibilities, and Dr. Faulkner summarized them for me:

What this asymmetry in galaxy rotation means for naturalistic theories is not clear. One of the possibilities discussed in the article is that our universe was birthed by a black hole from another universe, with the asymmetry in galaxy rotation being from the spin of the mother black hole. This sort of thinking is easy naturalistically because universes birthing other universes is very fashionable in that it solves many problems that the big bang model has. Admittedly, this is not the prevalent method by which cosmologists think universes are born, but it may become the dominant theme. The other possibility is uncertainty in the expansion of the universe, though it’s not clear to me how this would work.

When you read of astronomers arguing that maybe our universe was birthed from a black hole from another universe, it’s a reminder that people will believe in anything—even something ridiculous—rather than accept that the God of the Bible exists and created everything. And yet, every galaxy they studied (and every other galaxy) is daily proclaiming the Creator’s glory (Psalm 19), so they are without excuse (Romans 1:20).

There was no big bang—“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Get More Answers on Answers News

This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Dr. Tim Chaffey, Patricia Engler, and Avery Foley. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Astronaut proclaims the gospel while in space.
• How did iguanas cross the Pacific?
• Can newborns identify as “genderqueer”?
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.