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Milky Way to face a one-two punch of galaxy collisions
If our knowledge of galaxy structures was limited to the Milky Way, we'd get a lot of things wrong. The Milky Way, it turns out, is unusual. It's got a smaller central black hole than other galaxies its size; its halo is also smaller and contains less of the heavier elements. Fortunately, we've now looked at enough other galaxies to know that ours is a bit of an oddball. What has been less clear is why.
Luckily, a recent study provides a likely answer: compared to most galaxies, the Milky Way has had a very quiet 10 billion years or so. But the new study suggests we're only a few billion years from that quiet period coming to an end. A collision with a nearby dwarf galaxy should turn the Milky Way into something more typical looking—just in time to have Andromeda smack into it.
The researchers behind the new work, from the UK's Durham University, weren't looking to solve the mysteries of why the Milky Way looks so unusual. Instead, they were intrigued by recent estimates that suggest one of its satellite galaxies might be significantly more massive than thought. A variety of analyses have suggested that the Large Magellanic Cloud has more dark matter than the number of stars it contains would suggest. (Its stellar mass is estimated to be only five percent of the stellar mass of the Milky Way.)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 18 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 18 2019, @08:35PM (1 child)
It's arguably a good thing.
If interstellar travel is feasible while intergalactic travel isn't, then intelligent species may eventually conquer their entire galaxy, only to be stuck there.
It looks like the fate of the Milky Way is to merge with many nearby galaxies in the Local Group, forming a giant elliptical galaxy.
These mergers are not predicted to be particularly destructive to individual star/planetary systems. But they would bring many new star systems into reach.
So all we have to do is expand our presence in the galaxy, and wait until free lunch (matter and energy) comes to us, allowing us to expand even more. We might even meet other alien civilizations this way.
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @03:46PM
I hope those aliens are delicious and slow.