Very fabric of space-time RIPPED apart in latest Hubble pic Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 is ramming through the Norma galaxy cluster so hard it's spilling its guts out, leaving bright blue streaks of its own gases behind. Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 The spiral is zooming in between other galaxies in the Norma cluster, over 200 million light years away, at a speed of nearly 4.5 million …
here is the math...
speed of light M/s 186,000,000 *60 (seconds /hr)
Speed of light to hr 11,160,000,000
speed of galaxy 4,500,000
take the speed of galaxy/speed of light hr=0.000403226
multiply by 100=.04% speed of light... so ya not even 1%. Wonder though, at that speed what is the mass increase of an entire galaxy..
mind boggling... Are my numbers off... how did you get .6 not .4?
So with my math, the galaxy could be here in 496 billion years???
but figure you're looking at a fireworks display. Some piece goes up, explodes, and stuff fans out from that initial explosion with trajectories that (ignoring gravity and wind) won't intersect. But then those sparkly bits start to explode too, throwing stuff out in all directions from the point of those second-stage explosions. And debris trajectories from those explosions may well intersect.
Another option is that one of those galaxies was diverted because of the roadworks for a hyperspace bypass, and suddenly found itself in the path of another one who was ignorantly barging straight ahead at full speed.
In a similar vein, I rather like these SDSS images from a while back.
Or any star system for that matter. The chances of two stars colliding during a galaxy merger are very small as galaxies are mostly empty space. I once heard it described as being similar to letting two moths loose in a football stadium and having them collide mid-air by accident.
The stars have large differences in velocity and gravity is weak over long distances. Since the stars don't spend a lot of time in close proximity (due to the aforementioned empty space plus the high closing speeds of those that do happen to get near to each other), you can't rely on gravity to pull them together. Instead you have to get very (un)lucky, a bit like shooting two rifle bullets at each other from a long distance apart - pretty hard to make them collide unless you set up the perfect starting conditions.
Most of what happens is similar to the picture in the article - lots of gas and dust gets perturbed due to the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies and there will be one or more bursts of star formation as gas and dust is compressed together, various interesting tails will form as gas, dust and stars are dragged out of their orbits around the galaxy centre, etc. But very few actual collisions.
<blockquote>The chances of two stars colliding during a galaxy merger are very small as galaxies are mostly empty space.</blockquote>
Stars may be unlikely to collide but they do risk being slung out of the galaxy and losing the protection against cosmic rays which the galaxy's magnetic field provides. There's also the problem of stars passing nearby which trigger the infall of comets, threatening a system's planets with bombardment.
Anyway, when Andromeda hits the Milky Way it won't matter to us. The Earth will have been swallowed up by our expanding sun before then; in fact we've only got about 800 million years left before our oceans start to boil away.
And less than .1% of that time will have passed before the orbits of the inner planets become sufficiently irregular that everyone still alive in these parts will be praying for a cosmic express bus -- with heating and air-conditioning, both -- to anywhere else. Sometime between then and the oceanic boiling-off, though, the Earth-Moon distance will have grown sufficiently to increase the propensity of the planet we're currently on to wobble haphazardly in its spin - which could make for some very excellent surfing -- but not everyone is into that,. Not to mention that it would be a little difficult which direction to head in for a surfing safari.
>Stars may be unlikely to collide but they do risk being slung out
>of the galaxy and losing the protection against cosmic rays which
>the galaxy's magnetic field
But at least it takes them out of the Slow Zone and into the Zone of Thought..
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky)
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.....
....
..
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth!
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
because there's bugger all down here on Earth!
I believe it was the same bunch that released a song with the most excellent lyrics..
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
Assuming gold is the result of collisions between neutron stars (say some boffins of to day), collisions occur but not very "often". As for speed, that is difficult, as we seem to forget it's about time and distance and not about a physical experience. And "often" is often as difficult.
The effect of ESO 137-001's journey is to leave the seeds of star-making in its wake, but the galaxy is losing so much of its stellar fuel in this way, it's likely to have trouble making its own stars in the future.
In your dreams, buster, where imagination can deliver knightmares for star performers.
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