Simple Explanation of Alignment of Quasar Polarization with Large Scale Structures

As reported in Science News November 20, 2014, "Galaxies may be aligned across 1 billion light-years," raising questions about the formation of large scale structures in the universe. 

ESO/M. KORNMESSER

Here is their report:

The cores of several distant galaxies, spread out across roughly 1 billion light-years, appear to mysteriously align with one another. If confirmed, the new observations could be a hint of some unknown mechanism that shapes the largest structures in the universe.

Damien Hutsemékers, an astrophysicist at the University of Liège in Belgium, and colleagues used the Very Large Telescope in northern Chile to measure the orientations of 19 quasars, blazing disks of gas that swirl around supermassive black holes in the centers of some galaxies. Each of the quasars lives in one of four groups that are about 13 billion light-years away and centered on the constellation Leo. Within the groups, powerful jets of charged particles that spew from the quasars seem to point in nearly the same direction, the researchers report November 19 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The conclusions are on shaky ground, says Mike DiPompeo, an astrophysicist at the University of Wyoming. With only 19 quasars, the alignments could be just a coincidence. But even with a small sample, he finds the results intriguing and worthy of further investigation. It would be surprising, he says, if quasars knew how their neighbors were aligned. 

Citations:  D. Hutsemékers et al. Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures. Astronomy & Astrophysics. Published online November 19, 2014. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201424631.

For my own Simple Explanation of a toroidal mechanism that can explain this alignment of quasars, please read my article concerning a similar puzzling alignment of planetary nebulae in our own galaxy.

A Simple Explanation of Starless Galaxies

I have thought for some time that “empty” space is actually populated by a matrix of dark-energy vortices scattered throughout our universe. These dark energy vortices have weak gravitational fields that can attract ordinary interstellar material. Sometimes these vortices and their associated toroidal bubbles remain small and dark. Other times the dark-energy bubbles grow into gigantic proto-galaxies of weakly captured intergalactic dust which eventually form standard galaxies once the matter redistributes itself into stars and their satellites, in accordance with ordinary gravitational laws and fluid dynamics. 

The nearly starless galaxies referred to in the following article could be these very proto-galaxies observed during the process of formation. This observation is more evidence for my hypothesis.

Here is a reprint of an article published this week in Science News.

BARELY THERE  A faint galaxy, seen in the center of a Hubble Space Telescope image, is about the same size as the Milky Way but has relatively few stars. K. Cook et al., NASA, ESA

News

Astronomy

Nearly starless galaxies found in nearby cluster

New class of galaxy could lead to better understanding of dark matter

By Christopher Crockett

1:24pm, November 5, 2014

Not all galaxies are filled with stars. Astronomers have discovered a horde of nearly starless galaxies each about the size of the Milky Way. How they formed is a mystery, and they imply that there are more ways for a galaxy to evolve than previously imagined.

Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer at Yale University, and colleagues stumbled across 47 galaxies that stopped forming stars long ago. The stars in each galaxy that remain— about 0.1 percent of the number in the Milky Way — are spread throughout a sphere roughly the size of a typical spiral galaxy. A stargazer living in one of these galaxies might see only a few stars at night, says van Dokkum. “You need something unusual to create a galaxy like this.”

read original article here