<div align="justify">Einstein's theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after researchers led by an Indian origin scientist found a gigantic ring of galaxies darting away from us much faster than predicted.<br /><br />The 10 million light year-wide ring made up of small galaxies is expanding rapidly like a mini Big Bang, researchers said.<br /><br />The team believes our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, once flew past our own galaxy at close range, creating a sling-shot of several small galaxies.<br /><br />"If Einstein's gravity were correct, our galaxy would never come close enough to Andromeda to scatter anything that fast," said Dr Hongsheng Zhao from the University of St Andrews in the UK.<br /><br />If true, the discovery would force a new understanding of gravity and about our cosmos, as such a galactic flyby only makes sense if gravity weakens more slowly as galaxies drift apart than mainstream thinking suggests.<br /><br />"The ring-like distribution is very peculiar. These small galaxies are like a string of raindrops flung out from a spinning umbrella," said Indranil Banik, PhD student at University of St Andrews, who led the study.<br /><br />"I found there is barely a one in 640 chance for randomly distributed galaxies to line up in the observed way. I traced their origin to a dynamical event when the universe was only half its present age," said Banik.<br /><br />This tsunami-like wake in the sky was likely stirred up by a near-miss of the speeding Andromeda galaxy with our own galaxy, the Milky Way.<br /><br />The two massive galaxies always orbited each other in a plane and would have scattered dwarf galaxies in their paths, perhaps explaining why the speeding dwarfs are in a plane also containing the Milky Way and Andromeda.<br /><br />"In Einstein's gravity paradigm, hypothetical dark matter is always invoked. Such a high speed requires 60 times the mass we see in the stars of the Milky Way and Andromeda.<br /><br />"However, the friction between their huge halos of dark matter would result in them merging rather than flying 2.5 million light years apart, as they must have done," Banik added.<br /><br />The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</div>
<div align="justify">Einstein's theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after researchers led by an Indian origin scientist found a gigantic ring of galaxies darting away from us much faster than predicted.<br /><br />The 10 million light year-wide ring made up of small galaxies is expanding rapidly like a mini Big Bang, researchers said.<br /><br />The team believes our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, once flew past our own galaxy at close range, creating a sling-shot of several small galaxies.<br /><br />"If Einstein's gravity were correct, our galaxy would never come close enough to Andromeda to scatter anything that fast," said Dr Hongsheng Zhao from the University of St Andrews in the UK.<br /><br />If true, the discovery would force a new understanding of gravity and about our cosmos, as such a galactic flyby only makes sense if gravity weakens more slowly as galaxies drift apart than mainstream thinking suggests.<br /><br />"The ring-like distribution is very peculiar. These small galaxies are like a string of raindrops flung out from a spinning umbrella," said Indranil Banik, PhD student at University of St Andrews, who led the study.<br /><br />"I found there is barely a one in 640 chance for randomly distributed galaxies to line up in the observed way. I traced their origin to a dynamical event when the universe was only half its present age," said Banik.<br /><br />This tsunami-like wake in the sky was likely stirred up by a near-miss of the speeding Andromeda galaxy with our own galaxy, the Milky Way.<br /><br />The two massive galaxies always orbited each other in a plane and would have scattered dwarf galaxies in their paths, perhaps explaining why the speeding dwarfs are in a plane also containing the Milky Way and Andromeda.<br /><br />"In Einstein's gravity paradigm, hypothetical dark matter is always invoked. Such a high speed requires 60 times the mass we see in the stars of the Milky Way and Andromeda.<br /><br />"However, the friction between their huge halos of dark matter would result in them merging rather than flying 2.5 million light years apart, as they must have done," Banik added.<br /><br />The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</div>