Posted on 07/06/2018 3:35:21 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
It turns out that our galaxy looks the way it does today thanks to a run-in with something called the 'Gaia Sausage'.
As greasy as space is, we're not talking cosmic processed foods here. Rather, astronomers have found signs that a small galaxy smashed into the Milky Way billions of years ago, leaving behind a mess of stars with some rather unusual orbits.
So, what makes this cosmic object a 'sausage'? Cambridge University astronomer Wyn Evans says it all came down to the paths of the stars following the impact...
Collisions between galaxies aren't all that unusual, and the Milky Way has had its fair share of dust-ups with surrounding crowds of stars.
One small merger thought to have occurred just 100 million years ago left the galaxy "ringing like a bell" with huge ripples observed in our corner of the galaxy.
But this one wasn't just any puff of stars and dust. Additional analysis noticed it was accompanied by at least eight star clusters, meaning as far as small galaxies go it had to have been on the slightly chunky side of around 10 billion solar masses...
The stars long, radial velocities aren't unlike the comets in our own Solar System, dipping in and out of the galactic centre in tight U-turns and changing the density of the bulge. As the disc continued to stretch over time, those orbits elongated...
In around 4 billion years, Andromeda and the Milky Way will swirl together and mix stars in a slow dance that will once again change the shape of our galaxy in a monumental way.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Sorry I slept through that.
Must have something to do with Uranus.
My bad. Sorry.
I’ll try not to let it happen again.
Space based sausage assault on a galactic scale ping.
Sausage galaxy obviously just cruising the local group looking to pick up young hot stars. Left us with all these red giants and white dwarfs...
Anthony Weiner is now into cosmology.
I think I saw this happen once at a Milwaukee Brewers game.
Next, ab onslaught of the Philly Cheesesteak Galaxy.
Playing hide the sausage......
Wait a minute. I’m an old science teacher here.
If all began with the Big Bang, everything in the universe would be rapidly heading AWAY from the point of origin, and each piece and part, however large or small, would be increasing in its distance from all the other pieces and parts. And this would continue into eternity/infinity.
Does that not preclude collisions? Collisions could only be the result of suns/stars/galaxies on intersecting paths, meaning differing points of origin?
What am I missing here??????
Gravity.
The people of San Francisco will now have a new place to call home.
They can also now point to their place of origin.
That is an interesting thought.
What’s the wurst that could happen?
Not a physicist (son is), but don’t see how that could explain all collisions.....especially of whole galaxies, which seem to be held together by black holes, collide with other galaxies.
In addition, in the early stages of the “Big Bang”, when proximities of matter were close (relatively), the force of gravity would have been immeasurably greater, much more likely to bring about collisions in the early stages after the BB. Gravity diminshes immensely with distance.....
Did it knock first?
They mention space as being “greasy” as well. So we have cosmic KY, “sausage” and virginal galaxy. The baby about to be born is gonna be a “whopper”!
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