%0 Journal Article %T The Nearest Neighbor Alignment of Cluster X-ray Isophotes %A Scott W. Chambers %A Adrian L. Melott %A Christopher J. Miller %J Physics %D 2001 %I arXiv %R 10.1086/324278 %X We examine the orientations of rich galaxy cluster X-ray isophotes with respect to their rich nearest neighbors using existing samples of Abell cluster position angles measured from {\it Einstein} and {\it ROSAT} observations. We study a merged subset of these samples using updated and improved positions and redshifts for Abell/ACO clusters. We find high confidence for alignment, which increases as nearest neighbor distance is restricted. We conclude that there is a strong alignment signal in all this data, consistent with gravitational instability acting on Gaussian perturbations. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102218v2