Astronomers Discover When Galaxies Got Their Spirals 56
KentuckyFC writes "The universe today is filled with beautiful spiral galaxies — but it hasn't always been this way. In the early universe, there were no spiral galaxies, raising an interesting question: when did galaxies get their spirals, and how did they emerge? Now astronomers have the answer, thanks to an analysis of galaxies in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope known as the Ultra Deep Field. This shows some 10,000 galaxies of various ages. By ordering a subset of these by type and by age, astronomers have worked out how and when spirals must have evolved. It turns out the first spiral galaxies were simple two-armed structures and appeared when the universe was about 3.8 billion years old. But they say the universe had to wait until it was 8 billion years old before more complex multi-armed galaxies emerged, like the Milky Way and Andromeda."
Meh (Score:3, Funny)
The answer is obvious to anyone who likes old-style mythology:
When the gods rotate the universe to look for their next vacation spot, the resulting Coriolis force makes galaxies spin. They don't all spin in the same direction because of The Great Nebula Outing Debate of 10 000 000 000 PBB (Post-Big-Bang), when the Almighty-Mothers-In-Law kept rotating back and forth until The-So-Cute-One (then a toddler at barely 10000 years old) randomly sneezed a few more stars on Orion.
Ever since that event, people on Durandil Major have been unable to predict the way the water will flow when they flush their toilets.
Re:Interesting trend... (Score:4, Funny)
If Japan is any indication, multiple tentacles are usually followed by bukkake.