Andromeda Devouring Neighbor Galaxy 60
Scientific Ninja writes "Astronomers in the University of Sydney have captured pictures of a 'union' between our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, and its smaller neighbor, the Triangulum Galaxy. Published in the journal Nature on September 3rd, the research shows how large galaxies grow by incorporating stars from surrounding smaller galaxies. This popular model of galaxy evolution, called the 'hierarchical model,' predicts that large galaxies such as Andromeda, which can be seen with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere, should be surrounded by relics of smaller galaxies it has connected with."
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The troll-fu is strong in this one..
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Idiot, he's in his mom's basement, not walking down the street.
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This is just a model for one galaxy nomming another. God - whether such an entity exists or not - has nothing to do with it, it's an entirely natural motion, predicted, expected, and surprising no one with sufficient education.
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God - whether such an entity exists or not - has nothing to do with it, it's an entirely natural motion, predicted, expected, and surprising no one with sufficient education.
our universe makes sense.
Whether or not this is due to god's existence or the clever realization that we wouldn't be here if it didn't is a religious question. However, I'm pretty sure that if God DOES exist, He definitely has something to do with two galaxys colliding -- He either purposefully caused them to collide as a means of saying "hi", or He wrote the rules that cause them to do so.
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Just because I can: "Random or planned" is a false dichotomy. You fail, like every watchmaker apologist before you.
To mods: Make up your minds. Either mod it funny to ridicule it, or mod it offtopic so we don't have to look at it.
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Erm... seems like you might've responded to the wrong comment, or blatantly misread mine? I'm the atheist, responding to "God-boy", who never mentioned that particular argument (nor did I).
I admire your goals, but being a dick about it isn't going to change minds.
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If "god" is a factor in random events happening in the universe, next time you buy a lottery ticket and lose, or find your home galaxy is being engulfed by another galaxy, you have someone to blame.
It's always good to have someone to blame, rather than accepting the fact that random events do happen. And yes, it was "god" that made the bird shit on your car today, just after you washed it.
Now, if I was able to take a ship to observe the collision, that would be
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the number of independent countries are growing fewer
Did you miss the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and some other splits that happened not so far ago, or did I miss something?
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Don't mod down the cookie monster :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye8mB6VsUHw [youtube.com]
Not quite (Score:2, Interesting)
This is no a surprise, considering that we originally belong to Sagittarius and are being devoured ourselves by this alien "Milky Way" galaxy...
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Lets hope we miss the black hole in the middle.
Hmm, did Sagittarius have a black hole too?
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Being that a blackhole is just a superdense high gravitational area, it's generally assumed that every galaxy has one at the center. Kinda like you expect a treat at the center of every tootsie roll tootsie pop. Every one I've ever encountered had one, but it's possible that there are some that don't. :)
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Yeah, but this treat is swallowing YOU!
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If anything is surprising about this, it's the discovery that the disc of stars surrounding a galaxy can extend far beyond the bright, central disc.
I'd be interested to know if this additional, distant mass will effect any changes on our existing hypotheses for galactic formation and accretion.
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I doubt it matters.
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Was that intended as a joke?
+1 Funny [discovermagazine.com]
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Are we from the Sagittarius galaxy? These links suggest not.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/06/27/is-the-sun-from-another-galaxy/
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/
Hail! (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new carnivorous galaxy overlords ... or whatever that other puny galaxy is made out of.
But perhaps it's just some twisted form of galactic Darwinism, the weak die (or get consumed or whatever) while the big and buff galaxies prospers.
Alternativly perhaps space isn't even really endless at all but instead quite finite and Andromeda just needed some galactic lebensraum?
Just a few questions (Score:3, Funny)
1) is the takeover hostile or friendly
2) if it happened in this galaxy would it be subject to regulatory approval, and if so, under whose jurisdiction?
onoes (Score:2)
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Re:onoes obama (Score:2)
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You mean a good fight.
Forgive my spelling but... (Score:1)
Shrinkage (Score:1)
Is this how we eventually get back to a singularity or will it be after all due to shrinkage... :)
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Why should we all eventually get back to singularity?
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Re:Shrinkage (Score:4, Funny)
That's why I plant to commit suicide on my 99-trillionth birthday.
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And waste a whole trillion years of your lifetime? How shortsighted of you.
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Of extrapolating the piecewise, nonlinear, curve, careful you should be.
Re:Shrinkage (Score:4, Insightful)
This is local. What's happening on a global (ok, universal) scale is that the universe is expanding and after 100 trillion years all the hydrogen will be used up and there will be no more stars (or at least very few of them) and 10^whatever years after that the universe will just be a bunch of black holes slowly oozing out Hawking radiation. Very bleak.
So says the species that still thinks there is "Dark matter" and "dark energy" out there somewhere.
Physicists don't like to dwell on this point when summarizing what their research accomplished, but we really don't know enough to be definitive about how the universe will evolve. To wit: our LOCAL time-cone appears to be expanding, and if (1) this observation is correct, (2) the universe is homogenous to our time-cone, and (3) there isn't some exterior force pushing us together, then we'll all wind up in a cold death in the end.
For all we know, the vacuum of space might just have a slight red-tint to it, causing this "red-shift" that makes us think the universe is expanding. It's not like we have rulers or anything.
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For all we know, the vacuum of space might just have a slight red-tint to it, causing this "red-shift" that makes us think the universe is expanding. It's not like we have rulers or anything.
A red-tint is completely different from a redshift. The rulers are the hydrogen (and other elements) spikes in absorption spectra received from distant starts/galaxies/quasars... But you are right that this dark matter debate is one of the most mysterious in science today. We are in a similar position as with the 'unexplainable' results of the Michelson-Morley experiments over a century ago. It will probably get solved by a guy saying: "Look, it's really simple, just consider this..." like Einstein did with
Closest? (Score:2, Informative)
I thought Andromeda was only the closest /spiral/ galaxy. There are other satellite galaxies rotating around the Milky Way which are closer in distance than Andromeda.
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But dwarf galaxies are not galaxies ...
Hence we refer to them as galaxies...
Gravity wave spectrum (Score:4, Funny)
Past tense ... (Score:2)
Andromeda Devouring Neighbor Galaxy
Long ago and far away, a distant galaxy devoured another.
Terminology is important (Score:2)
Might I suggest that upon future occasions when such behaviour is observed, especially when it is captured on film, that we refer to the act of one galaxy gobbling down another as a "Glow Job".
xscreensaver knows how this will end (Score:5, Funny)
I know from watching the xscreensaver 'galaxy' that these galaxies will both destroy each other. That is almost always how it happens in the screensaver, so it must be that way in real life.
For the Love of All Things Holy... (Score:2)
I cannot believe the callous attitude shown by others on this board. Here we have a clear act of wanton aggression on a neighbor, and we do nothing? Where is the outrage? Where is the protesting in the streets? Why are we not contacting the Andromedan Embassy? We can't just sit here and watch it happen, we must do something! Just because this happened 2.5 million years ago is no reason to sit on the sideline. We must ACT!
The Plan (Score:2)