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 ...
Galaxies have been colliding forever. There is one in orbit around the Milky Way that passes through each time around.
Was wondering when you’d turn up on that one. :)
First he retired to Johnson City, TN. Now Barney Frank is interested in intergalactic travel.
;^)
“Just need to find a bacon galaxy and a fried egg galaxy and we’ll be set.”
Upon collision known as The Big Breakfast.
No, but it did knockwurst.
“I’m bumping this for the sausage jokes”
The Milky way and the sausage galaxy, the rest of the story.
If everything were movin away from a common point of origin, there'd be nothing blue-shifted, and there are some blue-shifted objects. It's almost as if knowledge isn't complete. :^)
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