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Galactic Pancake Mystery Solved
mOoZik writes "According to the BBC, Astronomers have figured out why a series of small galaxies surrounding the Milky Way are distributed around it in the shape of a pancake. Theorists believed that the eleven dwarf galaxy companions should have a diffuse, spherical arrangement, but a University of Durham team used a supercomputer to show how the galaxies could take the pancake form without challenging cosmological theory."
Damn, beaten to the Oolong joke.
For moderators: Oolong the Pancake Rabbit
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
How much of this kind of research does NASA actually do? It seems that they largely put the satellites in place and maintain them, and universities handle the data analysis.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
University of Durham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham/
Just 'cause it's not in the US...
NASA is about rockets. This isn't the sort of stuff they do really do. They help supply data to astronomers/cosmologists/physicists who apply to them, and who, largely, are affiliated with universities and are not "kids."
Dr. Feynman at CalTech and Dr. Sagan at Cornell, for instance, who were both rather famously at odds with NASA more often than not.
"Citizens" have always handled the bulk of astronomical research.
Because more often than not NASA is the necessary enemy of astronomers. It is a government agency, run for the government's purposes, complete with a government beauracracy, and only provisionally interested in theoretical science at all.
But they own Hubble.
I might also point out that these "kids" weren't even in America. England has a university or two worth a damn that might object to being catagorized as "random", and four or five smart people in them. Germany, China, Australia, and hell (as it were), even the Vatican have quite capable cosmologists of their own.
NASA isn't the center of the universe.
KFG
NASA doesn't really specialize in science. It specializes in complex engineering feats where outside scientists run the experiments. When the Mars Exploration Rovers landed on Mars, the project was run by JPL engineers, but the science data was evaluated by scientists at various institutions (initially the ones who helped design the science payloads).
NASA gets credit for many scientific discoveries due to the fact that they wouldn't be made without the NASA hardware. But NASA does not employ the scientists who make the discoveries (except in a few odd projects like asteroid impact research).
Sadly, this is not some kids at some random college. Durham is a very well respected university in the UK and Prof. Frenk is extremely well known. He is the fifth most cited physical scientist in the UK and the second most cited space scientist in the world. (The Brits really like to rank things ...)
http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~csf/homepage/cv.ps
Angular Momentum
If you have a total angular momentum of 0, you get an eliptical galaxy. All stars have totally random orbital orientations around the center, so it gives an elipsoid. it COULD be a sphere (but what do you mean with gravitational stable? all galaxies are dynamic), but the chances are rather slim).
If there is a angular momentum, it will create a disc simply because thats a lower energy state with the same angular momentum compared to a sphere.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
How about the forces they included in the simulation? Surely they work as an explanation one level back. It gets harder if you want to know why the forces act like they do.
You are absolutely kidding right? I've studied at Durham, UK (Carlos Frenk was my Astro lecturer), QM, London, and Stanford, US, and they all have their fair share of smart people. Calling Frenk, or indeed any of these guys "kids" is way out of line. Than again, I could just chalk it up as yet another example of American insularity. (Go ahead, mod me flamebait, I just don't take kindly to the "kids" vs. "pro" and "university of whatever" thing - it's rude and naive).
Dan