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Astronomers Witness Whopper Galaxy Collision
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Aug 07, 2007 08:01 AM
from the wanna-buy-some-galaxy-front-real-estate dept.
from the wanna-buy-some-galaxy-front-real-estate dept.
Raver32 writes "A major cosmic pileup involving four large galaxies could give rise to one of the largest galaxies the universe has ever known, scientists say.
Each of the four galaxies is at least the size of the Milky Way, and each is home to billions of stars.
The galaxies will eventually merge into a single, colossal galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.
"When this merger is complete, this will be one of the biggest galaxies in the universe," said study team member Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, gives scientists their first real glimpse into a galaxy merger involving multiple big galaxies.
"Most of the galaxy mergers we already knew about are like compact cars crashing together," Rines said. "What we have here is like four sand trucks smashing together, flinging sand everywhere.""
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Merger? (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of like if Walmart, Target, Sears, and the DoD merged?
One wonders what the galactic lawyers will get out of this.
No, you're all wrong!! (Score:2, Funny)
Nope. Read again, more closely.
Astronomers Witness Whopper Galaxy Collision
The implication is that Burger King intends to merge with Dairy Queen and will be introducing its line of BK burgers at DQ. Honestly.
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No, no. It's a merger of four giants! The implication is that Burger King, Subway, McDonald's and Taco Bell are all merging, and soon you'll be able to get McBurritos and Whopper subs on whole wheat.
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Or one of the nastier black holes, sort of like what happens with corporate mergers gone wrong, or the federal deficit, for that matter.
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During the collision of the galaxies, it's unlikely that any of the suns will even hit each other. That's how freaking big space is.
Consider that we are in a galaxy. Now consider our nearest star (other than the Sun) is so far away that it takes _years_ for light to reach us.
If our galaxy collided with another galaxy (as it will - we are set to collide with the Andromeda galaxy), we probably wouldn't see much.
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
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We need goverment intervention! (Score:2)
4 way stop? (Score:3, Interesting)
Layne
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Re:4 way stop? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10? Huh? (Score:2)
4 galaxies the size of the Milky way create something 10 times bigger? Either the galaxies are much larger than the Milky Way or the result is not 10 times bigger...maybe only 4 times bigger?
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It says at least.
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Re:1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10? Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Its Galacta-mania IV! (Score:5, Funny)
Four galaxies enter. One galaxy leaves.
Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)
BEOWULF!
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One of the biggest in the Universe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Expanding Universe? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Expanding Universe? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Expanding Universe? (Score:5, Informative)
*Well, this may or may not be the case, depending on how well I understand the expansion of space. If the apparently-faster-than-light expansion of the early universe is, in fact, due to a combination of things flying apart and the space between them expanding, it's reasonable to think that space is still expanding. In which case, literally everything is moving apart from everything else, from the neutrons and protons in your average nucleus to galactic clusters. But I may be misunderstanding the expansion of space.
Parent
Analogy breaking down (Score:2)
Now is that how they make those monster trucks?
But... (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt a "star crash" will happen (Score:2)
This type story doesn't do much for me (Score:5, Funny)
The other thing that keeps me getting excited about this stuff is when something REALLY COOL is going to happen, and then they say. "It will be in the very near future, realativly, in the next 5 million years."
I got more out of the banner ads for self aiming telescopes in the $400-$500 range. I never was good at aiming my old telescope. I could find the moon, but not anything smaller.
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Now, when someone can show me some live footage of two stars crashing into each other and a really big explosion, then I'll be impressed.
That's exactly what some gamma ray bursts [wikipedia.org] are thought to be: colliding stars. However, since they're colliding neutron stars, we can't really see them before the explosion, so all you see is a great big flash at the end. You don't see two stars zooming toward each other before they collide.
Wild eyed exaggeration (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, because obviously when a couple of small cars collide it takes place over a few hundred thousand light years and lasts for a million years or so (the warranty on the airbag may be voided).
And this one is like trucks smashing together?
I am now firmly of the view that astronomers:
How about "This in no way whatsoever resembles any kind of collision you have ever witnessed on Earth, it dwarfs your imagination, and by the way any kind of anthropocentric comparison should have been buried with Galileo?"
NASA Link (Score:3, Informative)
Astrophysical Journal LETTERS?! (Score:3, Funny)
Late one night while I was working on my dissertation on polarimetry of active galactic nuclei, I was surprised by Maria, the physics department's delicious young cleaning lady. Her janitorial uniform did little to conceal her large, perky breasts, which were spherical and of uniform density...
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Re:One of the biggest in the universe? (Score:5, Informative)
There are an infinite real numbers between 0 and 1 inclusive, but there is a largest element in the set (specifically, 1.0).
Likewise, even given an infinite set of galaxies, there can be a largest galaxy.
Parent
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As he says, this is a fallacy. Even if there were an infinite number of galaxies, that does not mean that each galaxy is necessarily larger than any other. You could, in fact, have an infinite number of galaxies that are all the exact same size.
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And while there may in reality be a finite number of possible sizes, the argument the OP made and the GP rebutted was about an infinite universe with an infinite number of galaxies, which are not necessarily each a different size than every other galaxy. The argument still works exactly a
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Re:We're in the middle of a galactic accident now (Score:5, Informative)
At any rate, take a look at the original press release that was misinterpreted to come up with this theory here: http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/ [virginia.edu]
And take a look at a debunking here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/27/is-
And the wonkiness about the angle we see the Milky Way at from Earth is just plain bad math.
Parent
That link is false (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
It's sorta like this (Score:5, Informative)
Some time ago, we figured out that:
1. All type 1a supernovae are exactly as bright when they blow up, because that's a star going a tiny bit over the Chandrasekhar limit. So basically they're all very nearly exactly the same weight stars, and blow up in the same way. So since seen brighness decays with the square of the distance, you can calculate how far it was when you see one.
2. (Based on 1 too.) The farther something is, the more re-shifted its spectrum will be. Basically the faster it moves. So you can know fairly accurately how far away these 4 are.
And it would have to be a freakin' big star to be _that_ bright at that distance. You're asking for a galaxy sized star.
3. We also know how big a main sequence star can possibly get, and that's only about 120 solar masses, but the closer you get to that limit, the faster it burns and the more unstable it is. The ones over 100 solar masses burn extremely fast and tend to regularly blow up huge chunks of their mass.
At any rate, we know that a star can't possibly be as big as those things at that distance. Even a star with 100 solar masses, won't have 100 times the Sun's volume. Gravity compresses them a bit more. And even 100 times the Sun's volume would be only a bit over 4.5 times the Sun's radius. It's just not even _near_ the size of a galaxy.
Also, in spite of their massive mass and fast burning rate, the hypergiant stars seem to be "capped" in brightness, so they won't get as bright as a whole galaxy anyway.
Also, remember when I said they burn very fast? A hypergiant burns and blows up in 1 to 3 million years, give or take a few. That's about 4 orders of magnitude shorter than our Sun. They just don't live long enough for 4 of them to come anywhere near each other.
Parent
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