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Astronomers Witness Whopper Galaxy Collision
Raver32 writes "A major cosmic pileup involving four large galaxies could give rise to one of the largest galaxies the universe has ever known, scientists say.
Each of the four galaxies is at least the size of the Milky Way, and each is home to billions of stars.
The galaxies will eventually merge into a single, colossal galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.
"When this merger is complete, this will be one of the biggest galaxies in the universe," said study team member Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, gives scientists their first real glimpse into a galaxy merger involving multiple big galaxies.
"Most of the galaxy mergers we already knew about are like compact cars crashing together," Rines said. "What we have here is like four sand trucks smashing together, flinging sand everywhere.""
The first part suggests that the galaxies are similar in size (either diameter or volume), whereas the second part refers to mass. It is entirely possible that each of the 4 galaxies is the same diameter as the Milky Way, but has combined mass of 10 Milky Ways.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Shouldn't that be "One of the biggest in the known Universe"?
New galaxy? Why do people keep acting like this is something new? It's unbelievably old and out of date, and I don't know how it got on a *news* site. If the light from this eveny is just getting to us, it happened millions of years ago. Oh, I know, the old excuse, "well, it's new to *this* light cone". Kinda like how that '86 Chevy is a "new car" ... to me.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It's probably related to the Banach-Tarski paradox!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.