Phoenix Journal 208 - Four Winds 10

PHYSIClSTS FIND AXIS THAT GlVES
THE UNlVERSE ORlENTATlON
April 17, 1997
Physicists at the University of Rochester and the University of Kansas have found evidence that flies in the
face of the long-held belief that space is the same in all directions (isotropic). In fact, measurements
indicate something seldom considered by physicists: that the universe has an orientation. The unexpected
finding, determined by measuring the polarization of light as it travels to Earth from the far reaches of the
universe, is the subject of a paper in the April 21 issue of Physical Review Letters.
The work, which may be one of the most fundamental findings about the universe in recent years, could
affect physicists’ views about the birth of the universe and suggests that scientists will need to explore how
Einstein’s theory of relativity and the theory of electromagnetism might explain the finding. That’s quite an
impact from an effect so tiny that it’s betrayed only by light traveling across most of the observable universe,
from l5 billion years ago. Physicists have dubbed the effect the “corkscrew effect” for the way it
twists light crossing the heavens.
“The big news is that perhaps not all space is equal, for as far back as we can peer in time,” says Borge
Nodland of the University of Rochester.
Adds co-investigator John Ralston of the University of Kansas: “The shocking thing about our result is that
there seems to be an absolute axis, a kind of cosmological north star that orients the universe. We don’t
really know yet what this axis represents.”
This axis of orientation is not a physical entity but rather defines a direction of space that somehow determines
how light travels through the universe. In effect, Ralston and Nodland have discovered a direction in
space that is out of the ordinary or different from all other directions. The idea that any direction of space
is in any way “special” has long been taboo among astrophysicists.
“This work defies the notion that there is no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in space,” says Nodland, research fellow at
Rochester’s Theory Center for Optical Science and Engineering.
From Earth, the axis of this orientation runs toward the constellation Sextans, roughly in the direction of
Leo and Gemini and high in the southern evening sky this time of year. The other end of the axis points
toward the constellations Aquila and Equuleus. (Stargazers, of course, will see nothing special when they
look in that direction.) Nodland and Ralston, a professor of physics and astronomy at Kansas, say the axis
might have several interpretations: it could be an intrinsic property of the universe, or it might indicate that
an undiscovered particle, such as the long-theorized axion, is at work.
The team made the finding by studying the polarization (orientation of electric fieids) of radio waves from
160 distant galaxies as measured in previous experiments by astronomers around the world. Nodland and
Ralston found that the plane of polarization of the light rotates like a corkscrew as the light travels through
space, and that the orientation of the universal axis that they’ve discovered is key to the amount of rotation.
The rotation of polarization depends on the angle at which the light moves relative to the axis and on the
distance the light travels before being measured. The effect is crudely analogous to that of a crystal that
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