Super-Galaxies Don’t Become Cannibals Until Later in Life

Astronomy Magazine ^ | 1 Dec, 2016 | K.N. Smith

[MtnClimber]

Before they turn to cannibalism, massive galaxies spend their infancy gobbling up recycled gas from earlier generations of star formation.

The Spiderweb Galaxy is actually more of a galaxy-in-progress. One day, it will be an enormous elliptical galaxy at the heart of a galactic cluster, but at the moment – technically, at a moment ten billion years away whose light is only just reaching us on Earth – it’s a group of about a dozen small proto-galaxies, slowly falling together and merging amid a vast halo of cold gas. At the center of that spiderweb of gas and merging galaxies sits a larger radio galaxy, which will one day form the core of the giant elliptical galaxy.

At 10 billion light-years away, the Spiderweb Galaxy offers astronomers a window into the formative years of the largest galaxies in the universe. It turns out that the birth of a super-galaxy is a more complex process than previously thought.

[MtnClimber]

Sounds worse than global warming.

[Fai Mao]

I thought they became famous bicycles

Dawes Super Galaxy Touring Bicycle

[Mariner]

Fascinating.

[justlurking]

Black holes suck.

And believe it or not, when a city commissioner in Dallas referred to an office as a "black hole" where stuff disappeared without a trace, a known agitator named John Wiley Price took offense, and said it should be a "white hole".

Apparently, he was unaware of the cosmological/astronomical phenomena.

[soycd]

Gravity does not care that it is not understood.

[adorno]

When will those super-galaxies realize that, eventually, they’ll run out of other galaxies matter?

[MtnClimber]

Does dark matter matter?

[roadcat]

Here we are on Earth, pondering what is out there. And it's more incredible than we can ever imagine. There is so much variety and elements here on Earth, and that and more is out there. Yet scientists talk down to us in simple terms, about clouds of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide gas that the stars feed on as if that's all there is. Much more is out there than we can imagine.

I was reading other articles last week, about the speed of light not being fixed in all time. Scientists speculating that the speed of light was much faster long ago, and has steadily slowed down over billions of years time. So all these measurements of galaxies being ten billion light years away or so, are hugely incorrect because the light that was on its way to us long ago was traveling much faster than now, so the perceived distances are off. Something to ponder.

[TigersEye]

[Larry Lucido]

The matterhorn of all dark matter would matter. Just a smatter.