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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.""
"When this merger is complete, this will be one of the biggest galaxies in the universe,"
Kind of like if Walmart, Target, Sears, and the DoD merged?
One wonders what the galactic lawyers will get out of this.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
So a galaxy is not like a series of tubes, it is like a truck? Fascinating insight there.
So, how long is this going to take? What happens when the black holes at the center of each one collide? And, if as we say yesterday, they are really worm holes, what will that imply? Will the wormholes be the 4-way stop of the galaxy?
Layne
Nope. Read again, more closely.
Astronomers Witness Whopper Galaxy Collision
The implication is that Burger King intends to merge with Dairy Queen and will be introducing its line of BK burgers at DQ. Honestly.
Four galaxies enter. One galaxy leaves.
It is assumed that the universe is not infinite in size.
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?
...the new-formed galaxy will be named:
BEOWULF!
Your logic is flawed.
There are an infinite real numbers between 0 and 1 inclusive, but there is a largest element in the set (specifically, 1.0).
Likewise, even given an infinite set of galaxies, there can be a largest galaxy.
Shouldn't that be "One of the biggest in the known Universe"?
I thought that galaxys where all moving away from each other. How did these manage to colide?
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There was no kaboom! There is supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
Well, as a programmer, the way I see it is that it should be 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 100, so that should *really* blow your mind.
Now, when someone can show me some live footage of two stars crashing into each other and a really big explosion, then I'll be impressed. Something far enough away so I can actually see it all happening, but not so far that it looks like a few grains of sand crashing into each other.
The other thing that keeps me getting excited about this stuff is when something REALLY COOL is going to happen, and then they say. "It will be in the very near future, realativly, in the next 5 million years."
I got more out of the banner ads for self aiming telescopes in the $400-$500 range. I never was good at aiming my old telescope. I could find the moon, but not anything smaller.
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This is definitely a cool idea. But it's just a myth. Take a look at that site--lots of wonky pseudo-science to be had. And I especially knew something was wrong when they started talking about the Mayan calendar and global warming.
t he-sun-from-another-galaxy
At any rate, take a look at the original press release that was misinterpreted to come up with this theory here: http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/
And take a look at a debunking here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/27/is-
And the wonkiness about the angle we see the Milky Way at from Earth is just plain bad math.
The astronomer quoted in that link has specifically stated that his work was misrepresented; see here and here. The Sun's orbit in the galaxy indicates that it did indeed originate in the Milky Way.
Yes, because obviously when a couple of small cars collide it takes place over a few hundred thousand light years and lasts for a million years or so (the warranty on the airbag may be voided).
And this one is like trucks smashing together?
I am now firmly of the view that astronomers:
How about "This in no way whatsoever resembles any kind of collision you have ever witnessed on Earth, it dwarfs your imagination, and by the way any kind of anthropocentric comparison should have been buried with Galileo?"
Pining for the fjords
It's probably related to the Banach-Tarski paradox!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Astronomers don't usually worry too much about the math, so long as the powers of 10 are good to +/- 10ish, so you're well within bounds.
It's sorta like this:
Some time ago, we figured out that:
1. All type 1a supernovae are exactly as bright when they blow up, because that's a star going a tiny bit over the Chandrasekhar limit. So basically they're all very nearly exactly the same weight stars, and blow up in the same way. So since seen brighness decays with the square of the distance, you can calculate how far it was when you see one.
2. (Based on 1 too.) The farther something is, the more re-shifted its spectrum will be. Basically the faster it moves. So you can know fairly accurately how far away these 4 are.
And it would have to be a freakin' big star to be _that_ bright at that distance. You're asking for a galaxy sized star.
3. We also know how big a main sequence star can possibly get, and that's only about 120 solar masses, but the closer you get to that limit, the faster it burns and the more unstable it is. The ones over 100 solar masses burn extremely fast and tend to regularly blow up huge chunks of their mass.
At any rate, we know that a star can't possibly be as big as those things at that distance. Even a star with 100 solar masses, won't have 100 times the Sun's volume. Gravity compresses them a bit more. And even 100 times the Sun's volume would be only a bit over 4.5 times the Sun's radius. It's just not even _near_ the size of a galaxy.
Also, in spite of their massive mass and fast burning rate, the hypergiant stars seem to be "capped" in brightness, so they won't get as bright as a whole galaxy anyway.
Also, remember when I said they burn very fast? A hypergiant burns and blows up in 1 to 3 million years, give or take a few. That's about 4 orders of magnitude shorter than our Sun. They just don't live long enough for 4 of them to come anywhere near each other.
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For anyone who finds space.com as annoying as I do, here is the link to the original story at NASA's Spitzer site.
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Next few million years should suffice.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
His logic did not depend on the set being continuous. It would have worked just as well using rational numbers in the range [0, 1], of which there are an infinite number and which still has a largest element (again, 1).
And while there may in reality be a finite number of possible sizes, the argument the OP made and the GP rebutted was about an infinite universe with an infinite number of galaxies, which are not necessarily each a different size than every other galaxy. The argument still works exactly as well in that case.
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Late one night while I was working on my dissertation on polarimetry of active galactic nuclei, I was surprised by Maria, the physics department's delicious young cleaning lady. Her janitorial uniform did little to conceal her large, perky breasts, which were spherical and of uniform density... I'm not sure this is a good idea...
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Jeez, talk about old news. Come on Slashdot, get with the program already.