Do voids in the Universe influence the orientation of galaxies?

[matt.o]

Not a peer-reviewed paper, though I'd be very surprised if John Huchra hasn't already published on or has on in the works. I'll take a look.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16903-new-cosmic-map-reveals-colossal-structures.html

Hmm. They don't give any details whatsoever in that article. I couldn't see any papers with Huchra as a co-author on ADS either, however Huchra may have just been approached for comment and may not have been part of the discovery. I'll wait for the paper to come out before commenting further or drawing strong conclusions.

 

[twofish-quant]

I couldn't see any papers with Huchra as a co-author on ADS either, however Huchra may have just been approached for comment and may not have been part of the discovery. I'll wait for the paper to come out before commenting further or drawing strong conclusions.

The other thing is that Huchra is an observationist and not a theoretician. He is a very good observationist, but I wouldn't immediately conclude that there really is a major problem based on an off-hand comment in a general journal.

 

[turbo]

I haven't found a link to a free version of this paper, so I can't vouch for the methodology, analysis, etc, but these authors claim that spiral galaxies on the edges of voids have rotational axes that lie preferentially on the void surfaces. Could be interesting.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/tk02015561k5573h/