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Milky Way Leaves Devastation in its Wake
soulctcher writes "An article on Yahoo! talks aout how a group of scientists now have evidence that the Milky Way galaxy, and others like it, are able to slice and dice their way through older galactic structures."
It slices! It dices! It cuts through old galaxies!
And it's only $19.95...BUT WAIT! If you act within the next 10 minutes, we'll include ANOTHER milky way with your order! That's right! Not one, but TWO Milky Way galaxies for only $19.95! Call now!
1-800-MILK-WAY - Please allow 6-8 billion years for delivery.
Always knew it was no coincidence those galaxies look like shurikens. It's those damn supra-galactic space ninjas, that's what it is. Somebody should do something about them, they'll hurt somebody.
-raph
Would you mind giving a source for your tale of globular formation and evolution? I've never heard any such thing, and I'm working on my Ph.D. in astronomy.
Globulars are indeed old. But 40-50 billion years would make them about 25-35 billion years older than the universe itself. We thought we had issues when they appeared to be a couple billion years older, but even astrophysicists can't ignore 30 billion years.
I'll assume that that was a typo, though. Globulars, according to all I have studied, formed around our galaxy. Either with it or shortly before it started to form. What would a quasar have to do with this? Quasars, sexy as they are, are only big black holes on a binge of eating. These are not the kinds of places you form clusters of stars.
Finally, when a globular passes through the Milky Way's disk, nothing really happens. You can tell because almost all globulars are on disk-crossing orbits. They have to be, since most are orbit nearer the galactic center than we do (this is how Shapley worked out where the galactic center was, after all). And since they've made quite a few orbits in their lives and since they are still around, clearly passing through the disk isn't terribly disruptive. And it shouldn't be expected to be: stars don't collide when galaxies pass through each other. This is easy to understand because galaxies are made of mostly empty space. Stars can find their orbits disrupted, but they seldom collide.
I'd be curious to see where you heard all of this.
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Would you mind giving a source for your tale of globular formation and evolution? I've never heard any such thing, and I'm working on my Ph.D. in astronomy.
---snip
He's testing you to see if slashdot's infamous crack-smoking moderators will mod up a post that "looks" at a fast glance informative, without actually bothering to read the post. What's even more humorous are the people that respond to his posts seriously.
Besides, you may be working on your Ph. D. in astronomy, but that is only slightly related to the fascinating world of astrology he was talking about (look at the last paragraph of his post).
I first noticed him when he posted some completely bogus information about Unix interview questions, getting basic facts wrong.
Anyway, he wanted to see if people would mod up without thought, and guessing from his recent history of posts, he's doing pretty good.
Look at his log at www.pdrap.org
You constantly tell us how we're destroying the Earth, global warming, oil is bad - now you're honestly expecting us to believe that our entire galaxy is destroying things?!
Cry me a river, you damn liberals.
;)
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
From what I hear, the Palomar system is just a bunch of trailer parks anyway.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Since the popular press tends to use the least familiar name for any given astronomical object, I wondered, "Is there an NGC number for that?" Apparently not. The faint Palomar globular clusters were discovered on photographic plates from an all-sky survey by the 48-inch Schmidt camera. They're supposed to be pretty tough to see visually. Palomar 5 is in Serpens Caput at RA 15h16m Dec -0.1 if you have a big scope and you're up to it.