- Observable universe mass matches a same-sized black hole.
- Two-thirds of JWST galaxies rotate opposite to the Milky Way.
- Poplawski's torsion model replaces the Big Bang with a Big Bounce.
In 1949, mathematician Kurt Godel presented Albert Einstein with an unusual birthday gift: a solution to Einstein's own field equations describing a universe that rotates. The birthday boy, by most accounts, found the implications unsettling.
Nearly eight decades later, computer scientist Lior Shamir at Kansas State University may have found the first observational hint that Godel was onto something. Are we inside a black hole? New data from the James Webb Space Telescope has revived the question.
The Density Coincidence That Won't Go Away
There is a calculation that graduate students in astrophysics encounter early in their training. Take the total mass of the observable universe. Work out how large a black hole containing that much mass would be.
The answer matches the size of the observable universe itself.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, walks through this arithmetic with characteristic relish in the video posted above. The average density of matter within our cosmic horizon corresponds precisely to what physics predicts for a black hole of equivalent size. As coincidences go, it is a large one.
What Is a Cosmic Horizon?
The cosmic horizon is the farthest distance from which light has had time to reach us since the universe began. Beyond it, information cannot reach us, not because there is nothing there, but because the universe is not old enough. A black hole's event horizon works similarly: a boundary beyond which nothing escapes.
The parallel runs deeper than size. Einstein's general relativity, when pushed through a black hole's event horizon, predicts that a new spacetime opens on the other side. The universe you came from effectively ends. A new one begins.
Two-Thirds of Galaxies Spin the Wrong Way
Shamir's 2025 paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society examined 263 early galaxies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. He measured their rotation direction.
In a random universe, roughly half of spiral galaxies should spin one way and half the other. Shamir found that approximately two-thirds rotated in the opposite direction to our own Milky Way.
Key figure
66%
Proportion of galaxies in Shamir's sample rotating opposite to the Milky Way, where 50% would be expected if rotation were random.
That asymmetry suggests the universe carries a net angular momentum, a kind of cosmic spin. Angular momentum is one of only three properties, along with mass and electric charge, that a black hole preserves. Everything else about whatever fell in gets erased.
The connection intrigued Tyson. "If there's a net angular momentum of the universe, where did it come from?" he asks. "It's not obvious that would come from a big bang, which is an explosion in all directions statistically evenly."
If there's a net angular momentum of the universe, where did it come from? It's not obvious that would come from a big bang, which is an explosion in all directions statistically evenly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hayden Planetarium Director
The Physicist Who Built the Theory
Nikodem Poplawski, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Haven, has spent more than a decade building the mathematical framework for this idea. His approach extends general relativity using a concept called torsion, the twisting behaviour of matter with intrinsic spin.
In Poplawski's model, collapsing matter inside a black hole never reaches a singularity. Torsion generates a repulsive force at extreme densities, halting the collapse and triggering a bounce. The result is not a point of infinite density but an expanding universe on the other side.
The Big Bang, in this picture, becomes a Big Bounce. The idea struck a nerve: National Geographic and Science both listed it among their top discoveries of 2010. Poplawski, characteristically understated, continued publishing refinements while the attention faded.
Key figure
263
Number of galaxies in Shamir's JWST sample, out of an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
A Sample Too Small to Settle Anything
The caution here is real, and Tyson voices it directly. A sample of 263 galaxies is vanishingly small against the estimated two trillion in the observable universe. Previous surveys using larger datasets found no such rotation asymmetry.
Paul Sutter, a cosmologist at Johns Hopkins, notes that observational bias could explain Shamir's result. Our own galaxy's rotation may subtly influence how we measure others. The signal could be in the telescope, not the cosmos.
Shamir himself acknowledges both possibilities in his paper: a genuinely rotating universe, or a Doppler effect tied to Earth's motion through the Milky Way. He does not claim to have settled the question.
More Cosmology
The universe remembers everything as cosmic memory
What if every interaction in the universe leaves a permanent imprint in the fabric of spacetime itself?
→Still, the theoretical architecture exists. If larger surveys confirm even a modest asymmetry, Poplawski's torsion-bounce model offers a ready explanation: our universe inherited its spin from whatever fell into the black hole that contains us.
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to image early galaxies by the thousands. Within a few years, the sample size that currently supports a tantalizing hint will either grow into evidence or dissolve into noise.
Godel's rotating universe, Einstein's unwelcome birthday gift, waits for the data.
Sources
- Primary Research: The distribution of galaxy rotation in JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (Shamir, L., 2025, MNRAS 538, 76-91)
- Video Source: Is Our Universe Inside a Black Hole? (StarTalk / Neil deGrasse Tyson)
- Additional Context:
- Do We Live inside a Black Hole? (Scientific American)
- Nikodem Poplawski (Wikipedia)
