Abstract
Observations have shown that within very strict limits the plane of oscillation of a Foucault pendulum does not rotate with respect to the distant galaxies. We may take the plane of the pendulum as a definition of non-rotation. In this sense our Universe is rotating very slowly, if at all. Ernst Mach advocated that this was no coincidence1, and the vanishing cosmic rotation is part of the empirical basis of what is known as Mach's principle. Amongst other things it decrees that cosmic rotation should be exactly zero. Assuming that the Universe came to being as a mini-universe of Planck dimensions which went directly into an inflationary epoch driven by a scalar field with a flat potential, we argue that the cosmic vorticity has decayed by a factor of about 10−145, due to the non-rotation of the false vacuum and the exponential expansion during inflation. Here we show that the hypothesis that the rotation of galaxies is caused by cosmic vorticity is not compatible with the inflationary model.
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References
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Grön, Ö., Soleng, H. Decay of primordial cosmic rotation in inflationary cosmologies. Nature 328, 501–503 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/328501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/328501a0
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