A cosmic teacups ride: the universe's largest rotating structure

Space · Published 22 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Imagine a theme park ride where every individual cup spins, while the entire platform rotates simultaneously. Astronomers have just found a structure in deep space that mimics this exact motion on a gargantuan scale, revealing how the universe's scaffolding shapes the galaxies within it.

Located 140 million light-years away, researchers have identified a 'razor-thin' string of 14 hydrogen-rich galaxies embedded within a massive cosmic filament. Spanning roughly 117,000 light-years in width, this smaller string reaches a length of about 5.5 million light-years. It sits inside a much larger cosmic filament—the largest known structures in the universe—which stretches about 50 million light-years long and contains over 280 other galaxies. What makes this discovery remarkable is the dual motion of the system. Not only is the entire filament rotating, but many of the individual galaxies within it are spinning in the same direction as the filament itself. This alignment is far more consistent than what would be expected from random distribution. By noting that galaxies situated on opposite sides of the filament's spine move in contrary directions, the researchers deduced a rotation velocity of 110 km/s and calculated the dense central region's radius to be roughly 50 kiloparsecs (around 163,000 light-years).

Cosmic flows are preserved within this structure as a 'fossil record'. Because it is in a 'dynamically cold' state—meaning it has low internal motion and many gas-rich galaxies—it appears to be a relatively young, undisturbed structure. It offers a rare setting for evaluating hypotheses regarding how cosmic rotation accumulates across tens of millions of light-years and how these massive 'highways' of gas and dark matter govern the growth and spin of hosted galaxies.

Dr. Becky Smethurst, an Oxford University astrophysicist, researches how supermassive black holes impact their host galaxies, specifically investigating whether energy from orbiting material disks can halt the formation of new stars within galaxies.

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