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Space

The cosmic web that connects galaxies together may be spinning

By Leah Crane

16 June 2020

Cosmic web

A simulation of the cosmic web of matter

Science History Images / Alamy

The cosmic web is spinning. Our universe is full of enormous filaments of matter that stretch between galaxies in a vast, interconnected web – and simulations suggest that those filaments are rotating.

We know that all galaxies spin and that their rotation can be affected by their environments, including any nearby filaments of matter, but we didn’t know whether these huge, thread-like structures also rotate. Now, Qianli Xia at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his colleagues have used simulations of how dark matter behaves in filaments to…

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