Posted on 08/29/2020 8:22:09 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA scientists have spotted what they are calling a “halo” around Andromeda. The halo, which is more like a huge bloom of plasma, stretches 1.3 million light-years into space. That’s roughly halfway to our own galaxy, which is an impressive feat.
We often think of galaxies as self-contained collections of stars, planets, and gasses, but that’s simply not the case. The effects of a galaxy extend far beyond their outer edge. In fact, the line between the edge of a galaxy and empty space is so blurred that there’s hardly a real “edge” at all. In the case of Andromeda, the halo of plasma is so massive that it absolutely dwarfs the size of the galaxy itself.
NASA scientists....observed the light of quasars situated much farther away than Andromeda itself. They measured the light of the quasars in relation to how close they appeared to Andromeda, from our perspective here on Earth. The thicker the plasma halo is, the more light from the quasar would be absorbed before it could reach the Earth, giving the researchers a bunch of new data points — 43 to be exact — with which to work.
“Previously, there was very little information—only six quasars—within 1 million light-years of the galaxy. This new program provides much more information on this inner region of Andromeda’s halo,” J. Christopher Howk, co-author of the work, explains. “Probing gas within this radius is important, as it represents something of a gravitational sphere of influence for Andromeda.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bgr.com ...
Andromeda Strain was one of the best early books I read. I wasn’t a big sci-fi fan but that one hooked me. I still wonder as days pass, if this is the planet I was born on.
This guy found out the hard way: https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_Galaxy_Being
The extent of M31's halo is mind-boggling! There's a strong possibility that it and our own galaxy's halo may interact -- although the two galaxies are two million light years apart.
I use the unaided-eye visibility of M31 to gauge if the "seeing" is really good.
Two million light years! And that's our closest neighbor galaxy... Facts like that make this...
...absolutely incomprehensible!
I praise our Creator -- that He allowed me to live in a time to see His wonders that the Hubble Telescope has revealed!
TXnMA
Thanks BenLurkin.
Lexi Doig. The hottest star in space. I’ve got her autograph from the Andromeda card set. The other women on that ship were pretty good too.
A woman with a raygun is my kinda woman, no matter where she is, or even if she is totally human or not (A pun re Cherry 3000).
#5. That part of space is so crowded I wonder where you can part your rocket ship. However, the view is spectacular.
“This”, as you label the image, is taken from one patch (about the size of a quarter held up to the sky) of the night sky deemed to be apparently without stars. After several days of exposure, the image was processed to produce the image. There are, by count, about 52 million galaxies in that image ...
Yep. And each one composed of billions to trillions of stars!
I probably still have the URL somewhere, but after the first, amazing "HDF" peek, someone produced a great video titled,"The Most Important Image Ever Made". And -- the HDF most certainly was...
The various Hubble Deep Fields literally opened the eyes of all humankind (if they will but look) to the unimaginable majesty and power of the Creator of our Universe -- and, to our own relative insignificance in it.
~~~~~~~~~
Yet, there are still some Earth-critters who think that burning parked garbage trucks in the streets makes them "powerful"...
The unimaginable number of stars makes the probability of life somewhere "out there" statistically likely. But, the distances involved make it near-zero probable that we will ever encounter other intelligent beings.
Maybe that's a good thing.
Because -- based on present evidence -- the probability that their intellects would dwarf ours is embarrassingly high...
TXnMA
Also a statistical fact - each star has at least one planet. So in out galaxy that would be about 300,000,000 planets at the minium. As for the distance thing - just imagine you had one of the very rare copies of “Dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field” and were well versed in theoretical physics.
Would you conclude as Oliver Heaviside did that James Clerk Maxwell’s 200 quaternions were garbage and only four really could be converted into vector equations?
Or would you actually study them as they are and conclude as Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein did that there was a lot more there? That there is no such thing as distance, since it is possible to step from any one point in the universe to any other point instantaneously?
If you were an Alien from some other star and not bound by our Earth cultural norms and consensus thinking, might you just make something with that knowledge so you could travel anywhere in the Universe?
But then you aren’t an Alien, and so would you fall back and support Heaviside’s trashing of 196 of the quaternions and reworking four of the quaternions into everything we now know about the entire electromagnetic spectrum?
The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose - J. B. S. Haldane.
or
“We are so far beyond all things Star Trek, that what we have is not only 50 years beyond what anyone imagines, but 50 years beyond what anyone CAN imagine - Kelly Johnson
Yes it did !
I’m a SciFi fan who will even watch bad SciFi.
This couldn’t hold my interest through 5 episodes .
And, if we have -- and can use -- what he mentioned -- I hope we can find a few worthy brains to send along with it.
My point was -- IF "they" come here right now -- "vermin extinction" would be the likely result...
TXnMA
And, if we have — and can use — what he mentioned — I hope we can find a few worthy brains to send along with it.
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