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February 16, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Astronomers spot one of the largest spinning structures in the universe<\/p>\n This enormous chain of hundreds of galaxies\u2014a cosmic filament\u2014is twisting through space 400 million light-years away<\/p>\n By Humberto Basilio edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n Artist\u2019s interpretation of the newfound spinning filament.<\/p>\n The first time that University of Oxford astronomer Lyla Jung saw the cosmic configuration on her monitor, she almost didn\u2019t believe it was real. But it was\u2014and Jung and her colleagues went on to identify one of the largest rotating structures ever found in space: a chain of galaxies embedded in a spinning cosmic filament 400 million light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n The finding, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may give astronomers new insights into galaxies\u2019 formation, evolution and diversity, Jung says.<\/p>\n Galaxies are not positioned either randomly or uniformly in the universe; instead they are connected in structures called filaments that link them, together with dark matter, across space. Along with voids\u2014empty spaces that contain very little matter\u2014and groups of hundreds of thousands of galaxies known as clusters, filaments form what astronomers call the cosmic web.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n These filaments are the main channels through which matter flows, feeding galaxies and clusters as structures expand. \u201cBy studying filaments, we gain insight into how large-scale structure forms and how galaxies acquire their spins,\u201d says astrophysicist Peng Wang of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, who was not involved in the new study.<\/p>\n In 2021 Wang and his colleagues reported that based on calculations and satellite imagery, several filaments seemed to be rotating. The new study takes a closer look at one of these structures. Using data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, which was helping to map cold hydrogen gas in nearby galaxies, Jung\u2019s team found 14 hydrogen-rich galaxies arranged in a thin, 5.5-million-light-year-long structure. That structure was embedded within a filament 50 million light-years long that contains more than 280 galaxies.<\/p>\n The researchers observed that many of the individual galaxies MeerKAT detected were spinning\u2014and, to their surprise, they also found that the entire filament, including the rest of its galaxies, appeared to be rotating in sync with that spin at a speed of about 110 kilometers per second, something astronomers hadn\u2019t seen before. \u201cI started doubting if it was real or if I did something wrong in the analysis,\u201d Jung says.<\/p>\n Detecting this phenomenon \u201cis exceptional,\u201d Wang adds, because the observation signal is faint, and overlapping objects along the line of sight can muddy the picture without very careful data collection and modeling.<\/p>\n In later analyses, Jung and her team found that the filament is probably still taking on more material. Many of its galaxies seem to be in the early stages of growth, she says, because they appear rich in the hydrogen that provides fuel for new stars.<\/p>\n One of the most convincing pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter comes from measurements of galaxies\u2019 rotation. Studying the rotation of filaments could also reveal how much dark matter is in them, says astronomer Noam Libeskind of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who was not involved in the study. By revealing what portion of the universe exists in these filaments, Libeskind says, this study and future ones like it offer \u201ca way of measuring the dark matter content of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 16, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Astronomers spot one of the largest spinning structures in the universe This enormous chain of hundreds of galaxies\u2014a cosmic filament\u2014is twisting through space 400 million light-years away By Humberto Basilio edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Artist\u2019s interpretation of the newfound spinning filament. The first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4341,64,12467,2877,22035,1179],"class_list":{"0":"post-44603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-astronomers","9":"tag-largest","10":"tag-spinning","11":"tag-spot","12":"tag-structures","13":"tag-universe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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