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posted by mrpg on Friday January 18 2019, @03:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the bring-it-on dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

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.)


Original Submission

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Messier 90 on Collision Course with Milky Way 17 comments

The ESA (European Space Agency) which operates the Hubble Space Telescope together with NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) announced this month that the distant galaxy Messier 90 is on a collision course with our own Milky Way, and it is speeding up.

As the universe infinitely expands into the void of space from the moment of the Big Bang, light shifts towards the red end of the visible spectrum. But NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a nearby galaxy, Messier 90, shifting to the blue end of the spectrum – a sign it is accelerating towards us.

The vast majority of galaxies are heading away from us, making Messier 90, which is breaking away from the other 1,200 galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, "an incredible rarity."

This puts Messier 90 (60 million light years away) in the company of Andromeda (2.5 million light years) and the Large Magellanic cloud (200,000 light years), both of which which will be colliding with the Milky Way in the next few billion years.

Fortunately galaxy collisions are unlikely to result in any actual stars colliding. According to astronomer Dr Amelie Saintonge of University College London "the probability of two stars colliding is almost zero", so we should be relatively safe from being affected by these collisions billions of years in the future.

This doesn't mean we should sit back however. The sun is likely to make Earth uninhabitable by then through routine heating (the sun gets about 10% brighter every billion years) evaporating our oceans and shifting us into a runaway greenhouse effect similar to what Venus underwent.

Related Coverage
Andromeda may be Closer than Previously Thought
Milky Way to Face a One-two Punch of Galaxy Collisions


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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 18 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday January 18 2019, @05:18PM (#788306) Homepage Journal

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 18 2019, @08:35PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday January 18 2019, @08:35PM (#788402) Journal

      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.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @03:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @03:46PM (#788663)

        I hope those aliens are delicious and slow.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 18 2019, @05:34PM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 18 2019, @05:34PM (#788311) Journal

    You don't want to miss it!

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 18 2019, @05:58PM (2 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 18 2019, @05:58PM (#788322)

      Step 1: Wait 3.75 billion years.
      Step 2: Get to a place where you can see the show. Easier said than done, of course.
      Step 3: Watch the show for about 15-20 million years.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @07:37PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @07:37PM (#788382)

        Step 1: Wait 3.75 billion years.
        Step 2: Get to a place where you can see the show. Easier said than done, of course.
        Step 3: Watch the show for about 15-20 million years.

        Step 4: ...
        Step 5: Profit!

    • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday January 18 2019, @10:27PM

      by inertnet (4071) on Friday January 18 2019, @10:27PM (#788449) Journal

      What an exciting time to be alive!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @01:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @01:33AM (#788493)

    Maybe there is a better word because it is likely not a single star will actually collide, just re-arrange its orbit

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @02:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @02:43AM (#788519)

    This is just more anti-Christian propaganda. God's work can't be so destroyed.

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