How can the rotation of galaxies be explained?

[Raimund Kempe]

How did you find PF?: Google search

How can galaxies rotate coming from a singularity?

Raimund

 

[phinds]

How did you find PF?: Google search

How can galaxies rotate coming from a singularity?

Raimund

You apparently have a misconception of what "singualrity" means and you think it means a point in space where things came from. Even in pop-science it is not stated that galaxies came from a singularity but it is stated (incorrectly) that the universe exploded from a singularity.

Singularity just means "the place where our math model breaks down and we know know WHAT is/was going on".

 

[Raimund Kempe]

Thanks for your response and the rectification, but the real question remains unanswered: How can galaxies' rotation be explained?

Raimund

 

[DaveC426913]

How can galaxies' rotation be explained?

It is explained by Conservation of Angular Momentum.

1. Take a volume of matter with random movement.
2. Gravity draws the matter into clumps.
3. The clumps retain the angular momentum of the original dust cloud, leaving a non-zero residual motion.
4. Paths that do not intersect survive longer than paths that collide, leading to the gas cloud planing out and rotating in a common direction.

 

[Raimund Kempe]

Thanks for bringing in this important principle of spin conservation.
Yet we have two questions:
What does this principle mean for the whole universe with its billions of rotating galaxies?
And what does it mean for the state at the very beginning?

Raimund

 

[phinds]

What does this principle mean for the whole universe with its billions of rotating galaxies?

nothing - the universe is not rotating - you seem to have reverted back to thinking that the universe "exploded" from a point in space.

And what does it mean for the state at the very beginning?

nothing - there was no rotation at the beginning - you seem to have reverted back to thinking that the universe "exploded" from a point in space and was somehow rotating then.

EDIT: think of a table on which there are a large number of spinning tops, some spinning one way, some the other way. Do you think that means that the table will rotate?

 

[Raimund Kempe]

Your answers are not compatible to the principle of spin conservation.
The vector-sum of all galactic spins defines what could be called 'rotation'.
This vector-sum is not zero.

Raimund

 

[phinds]

Perhaps it was a bad analogy. Do you think the entire universe is spinning? Do you realize that that would imply an axis that it is spinning about, which would imply a preferred frame of reference, thus negating the Cosmological Principle (the basis of modern cosmology)?

 

[Nugatory]

Your answers are not compatible to the principle of spin conservation.

There is no such principle. There is conservation of angular momentum, but angular momentum includes more than just spin around centers of mass.
However, if we try to define the conserved angular momentum of the entire universe we run into the same sorts of problems that we encounter if we try to apply conservation of energy to the entire universe: the local differential formulation works just fine but the global integral formulation does not. The total angular momentum of the universe at a point in time is ambiguous for pretty much the same reasons that the total energy of the universe at a point in time is ambiguous.

 

[sophiecentaur]

the real question remains unanswered: How can galaxies' rotation be explained?

I think you are confusing the angular momentum of an individual galaxy and the total angular momentum of the Universe. As far as I know, there is no evidence of any net angular momentum and no evidence of a 'preferred' axis but if you start with a sample of primordial gases (the future galaxy) then that sample would be expected to have a non zero angular momentum and some preferred axis. The rest follows.