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When Galaxies Collide

Posted by michael on from the a-fox-special dept.

neutron_p writes "An international team of scientists announced today, they observed a nearby head-on collision of two galaxy clusters. The clusters smashed together thousands of galaxies and trillions of stars. It is the most powerful events ever witnessed. Such collisions are second only to the Big Bang in total energy output. The event was captured with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory. Scientists are calling the event the perfect cosmic storm: galaxy clusters that collided like two high-pressure weather fronts and created hurricane-like conditions, tossing galaxies far from their paths and churning shock waves of 100-million-degree gas through intergalactic space."

5 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Our turn is coming by dpilot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Last I heard we were due to collide with the Andromeda galaxy. It must be around the hundred million or billion year range, though.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    1. Re:Our turn is coming by Schwarzchild · · Score: 2, Informative

      The last I heard was that two galaxies were colliding with the Milky Way and we just weren't aware of it until astronomers looked at the data the right way.

      --

      "sweet dreams are made of this..."

  2. Not the first time... by miope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obviusly, is not the first time it happens. Not so obvius, is not the first time this has been studied, either.

    By the way, there's a slighty more detailed article in space.com., some other useful links in the article, also.

    Excerpt from space.com:

    The smaller cluster most likely contained about 300 galaxies, while its larger neighbor about 1,000 galaxies, researchers said. But when the two clusters collided with one another, they formed a still unsettled super cluster about 1 million light-years across that should take another billion years to settle down completely, researchers said.
  3. NASA "Merger Website" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Contains further information, videos, pictures.

    http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0831galax ym erger_media.html

  4. Re:Wouldn't the Galaxies just pass through each ot by dougmc · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's not really any reason to expect any intense gravity fields, not more intense than you can find in a normal galaxy anyways.

    Well, a giant star has a large gravity field, and if two giant stars were to collide, it would be even larger, but that's really about it.

    If a large star got close enough to us to affect the local gravity field enough to affect time, we'd all be dead long before, so there's little reason to worry about that. It takes seriously strong gravity (by terrestial standards) to signifigantly affect time, and anything that came even remotely close to doin that would destroy the Earth first (not to mention distrubring our orbit, which alone could cause massive global catastrophes.)