Cosmology Papers

For centuries, the principle of symmetry has guided physicists towards more fundamental truths, but now a slew of shocking findings suggest a far stranger idea from quantum theory could be a deeper driving force

The earliest acoustic vibrations in the cosmos weren’t exactly sound – they travelled at half the speed of light and there was nobody around to hear them anyway. But Jim Baggott says from the first moments, the universe was singing

A galaxy cluster in the early universe is 10 times hotter than it ought to be, which may reshape how we think these enormous structures formed

An analysis of several experiments aimed at detecting the mysterious neutrino has identified a hint of a crack in the standard model of particle physics

Astronomers were puzzled by a black hole around 50 million times the mass of the sun with no stars, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope – now simulations suggest it could be a primordial black hole, something we have never seen before

Mysterious ‘little red dots’ seen by the James Webb Space Telescope can be explained by a new kind of black hole enshrouded in an enormous ball of glowing gas

Science, Volume 390, Issue 6779, Page 1230-1231, December 2025.

Our understanding of the true nature of the cosmos relies on measurements of its expansion, but cosmologists have been arguing back and forth about it for more than 100 years

For centuries, Europeans thought that eternal daylight saturated the cosmos. The shift to a dark universe has had a profound psychological impact upon us

Their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could offer valuable new insights into how galaxies formed in the early Universe.

Cosmic filaments are the largest known structures in the Universe: vast, thread-like formations of galaxies and dark matter that form a cosmic scaffolding. They also act as ‘highways’ along which matter and momentum flow into galaxies. Nearby filaments containing many galaxies spinning in the same direction – and where the whole structure appears to be rotating – are ideal systems to explore how galaxies gained the spin and gas they have today. They can also provide a way to test theories about how cosmic rotation builds up over tens of millions of light-years.

In the study, the researchers, including astronomers from the University of Cambridge, found 14 nearby galaxies rich in hydrogen gas, arranged in a thin, stretched-out line about 5.5 million light-years long and 117,000 light-years wide.

This structure sits inside a much larger cosmic filament containing over 280 other galaxies, and is roughly 50 million light-years long. Many of these galaxies appear to be spinning in the same direction as the filament itself- far more than if the pattern of galaxy spins was random. This challenges current models and suggests that cosmic structures may influence galaxy rotation more strongly or for longer than previously thought.

The researchers found that the galaxies on either side of the filament's spine are moving in opposite directions, suggesting that the entire structure is rotating. Using models of filament dynamics, they inferred the rotation velocity of 110 km/s and estimated the radius of the filament’s dense central region at approximately 50 kiloparsecs (about 163,000 light-years).

“What makes this structure exceptional is not just its size, but the combination of spin alignment and rotational motion,” said co-lead author Dr Lyla Jung from the University of Oxford. “It’s like the teacups ride at a theme park. Each galaxy is like a spinning teacup, but the whole platform- the cosmic filament -is rotating too. This dual motion gives us rare insight into how galaxies gain their spin from the larger structures they live in.”

The filament appears to be a young, relatively undisturbed structure. Its large number of gas-rich galaxies and low internal motion—a so-called dynamically cold state—suggest it’s still in an early stage of development. Since hydrogen is the raw material for star formation, galaxies that contain lots of hydrogen gas are actively gathering or retaining fuel to form stars. Studying these galaxies can give a window into early or ongoing stages of galaxy evolution.

Hydrogen-rich galaxies are also excellent tracers of gas flow along cosmic filaments. Because atomic hydrogen is more easily disturbed by motion, its presence helps reveal how gas is funnelled through filaments into galaxies, offering clues about how angular momentum flows through the cosmic web to influence galaxy structure, spin, and star formation.

The discovery could also inform future efforts to model intrinsic alignments of galaxies, a potential contaminant in upcoming weak lensing cosmology surveys with European Space Agency's Euclid mission and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

“This filament is a fossil record of cosmic flows,” said co-lead author Dr Madalina Tudorache from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “It helps us piece together how galaxies acquire their spin and grow over time.”

The team used data from South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope, one of the world’s most powerful telescopes, comprising an array of 64 interlinked satellite dishes. This spinning filament was discovered using a deep survey of the sky called MIGHTEE, combined with optical observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to reveal a cosmic filament exhibiting both coherent galaxy spin alignment and bulk rotation.

Reference:
Madalina N Tudorache, S L Jung et al. ‘A 15 Mpc rotating galaxy filament at redshift z = 0.032.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2025). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf2005

Adapted from a media release from the University of Oxford.

Astronomers have identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a “razor-thin” string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament, 140 million light-years away.

Lyla JungA figure illustrating the rotation of neutral hydrogen (right) in galaxies residing in an extended filament (middle), where the galaxies exhibit a coherent bulk rotational motion tracing the large-scale cosmic web (left).

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time

We can't see dark matter directly, so studying it pushes the boundaries of our creativity as scientists. How exciting, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real

Unexplained gamma ray radiation coming from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy could be produced by self-annihilating dark matter particles – but the idea requires further investigation

Nature, Published online: 17 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03719-9

Nobel laureate who mapped temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC

This image released on June 30, 2025, combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to visualize dark matter. Researchers used Webb’s observations to carefully measure the mass of the galaxy clusters shown here as well as the collective light emitted by stars that are no longer bound to individual galaxies.

Learn more.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC

A dwarf galaxy 100 million light years away is being stripped of its crucial star-forming gas, and it seems that the cosmic web is siphoning off this gas as the galaxy passes through

It is widely accepted that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, but now researchers say our measurements of the mysterious force driving that may be wrong and that the universe began to slow 1.5 billion years ago – but other scientists disagree

How do we know the speed of light – and why does it have a speed limit at all? Leah Crane explores the history of one of the most important numbers in the universe

Nature, Published online: 31 October 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03414-9

Modelling shows how the infant Universe might have stayed warm and dense during its primoridal expansion.