Galactic Cannibalism Photographed 13
fuqqer writes "What does a galaxy do when it gets hungry? It eats another...Check out the story of intergalactic cannibalism on space.com, or on cnn.com. There's a oldie but goodie nature article too! This ain't no pygmy Thanksgiving in Borneo!"
Oh yeah?! (Score:5, Funny)
Eat your heart out
Signed,
The omega system
Why it's important (Score:5, Informative)
But that's not really why studying galaxy interactions is worth doing. A big reason beyond "it's cool to know the origins of stuff" is that there's only 2 ways to test basic physics. Either crash subatomic stuff, or look at galaxy-scale or larger. Both are the only places where really small effects in physics (like relativity or mass differences or antisymmetry effects) show up.
Subatomic is easier in some ways, as you can actually run an experiment, play with variables. In astronomy, you can only observe, classify, and hope to identify things that are similar yet different.
The famed dark matter hack, for example (hmm... my galaxies won't hold together with just stars and gas using gravity. Let me add some dark matter to keep them stable, those pesky humans won't know the difference) is a good case for continuing this study. If dark matter exists, it should also exist in our solar system, and may have properties worth investigating. If it doesn't exist, our basic understanding of physics is entirely wrong and that opens up entirely new possibilities.
So, support your local astronomers, they're determining reality around you, and letting us know where we came from!
Re:Why it's important (Score:2)
Supersymmetric particles do not interact with 'normal' matter, hence we can't detect them directly. The only exception to this is the Higgs Boson, which is believed to be what gives all particles their mass.
We'll never be able to study dark matter directly, only it's effects on
NASA Pr0n? (Score:3, Funny)
click here for hot galaxy-on-galaxy action [space.com]
Swirl! (Score:2)
Oh my god, what have they done!! (Score:3, Funny)
Then, all the non-affected galaxies will organize a boycott of imported
In Russia... (Score:1, Offtopic)
In Space, Galaxies eat YOU!
And it is all because: (Score:1)
Silver man on surfboard seen fleeing scene (Score:2)