Posted on 01/06/2013 8:06:50 PM PST by LibWhacker
A string of 13 dwarf galaxies are in orbit around the galaxy Andromeda. The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and 30,000 light years thick, moving in synchonicity with each other. The phenomenon is unlike behaviour of other observed galaxies and suggests a hole in our knowledge of galaxy formation.
A string of 13 dwarf galaxies in orbit around the massive galaxy Andromeda are not behaving as they should.
The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and only 30,000 light years thick, moving in synchronicity with one another, according to University of Victoria astronomer Julio Navarro, one of the co-authors of an article on the phenomenon in the latest edition of the journal Nature.
The view from Earth is of the thin edge of the plane, so the galaxies all appear to be moving in a line, Navarro said. Their behaviour is so different from the usual chaotic orbits of galaxies around each other that the researchers believe they have revealed a huge hole in science’s understanding of galaxy formation.
“It’s a very unusual, unexpected configuration,” Navarro said. “It suggests our thinking about how galaxies form is totally wrong.”
Computer models suggest that galaxies — collections of stars formed from dust and gas spread across the vastness of space — should orbit independently, almost randomly.
“[Galaxies] are like bees in a beehive,” he said. “We had thought that galaxies collect stars one by one from different directions and different orbits.”
But the structure of the synchronous galaxies orbiting Andromeda is much more like a mature solar system.
In solar systems, planets are created from debris and come to move in a plane-like formation over the course of hundreds of millions of orbits around a star. The same process led to the rings of rubble around Saturn.
But the dwarf galaxies of Andromeda are spread across a distance so vast that they haven’t completed a single orbit.
“Somehow they have a plane-like structure similar to a solar system, but with a completely different origin and we don’t know what that origin is,” Navarro said.
Twelve of the 13 dwarf galaxies — they range in size from 10 million to 100 million stars — are on one side of the orbital plane, as if they are held by a string being swung from Andromeda.
“This looks like they are all moving together and they all know where to go, like some pre-existing structure has been sucked in by Andromeda,” he said.
Hmmm, while I can’t quite figure out what’s going on in that picture, I thought “what in the world is Moltke talking about?” And then... LOL!
“It suggests our thinking about how galaxies form is totally wrong.”
But if you had questioned their thinking yesterday they would have called you a Luddite.
More evidence, as if any were necessary, why to never take “scientific” theories too seriously.
:-)
But that part in title...’all in a row’...sort of redefines what I’ve so far understood a ‘row’ to be. (They could’ve called it a ‘hockey stick’...and claimed it’s ‘our fault’. Science sure has changed since I graduated.)
As much as I love science and the scientific method, that DID make me chuckle, thanks!
Exactly! Veeeeery confusing.
“Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine”
No, that’s the proper role of those with the notion that knowledge is immutable.
I can’t remember where or how I found it, I only know that I coveted it and stole it. I think it was an actual sign on the entrance door of a restaurant that had closed so the owners could take their summer trip back to the old country. :’)
/bingo
I think you just invented the Infinite Improbability Drive...
Well then... have the government send me a big ole' check.
My guess is, that even though this is an infinite chaotic Universe, that is the ONE THING that will never happen.
Did I just uninvent the Infinite Improbability Drive ?
A string of 13 dwarf galaxies in orbit around the massive galaxy Andromeda are not behaving as we think they should.
While I completely agree, and appreciate your response, I don’t see why you responded to me.
(maybe this is the reason) Pretty much every thing we ‘think’ about the Universe around us has been proven wrong. We still have plenty we are wrong about, we just haven’t ‘discovered’ it yet.
Puppeteers figured out how to move galaxies.
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