Hubble Takes Pictures of Colliding Galaxies 74
Jerry Smith writes "The Register reports that the Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong, and took snapshots of two colliding galaxies. The sizes average between thousands and hundreds of thousand light years, containing ten million to one trillion stars. The process took hundreds of millions of years, and will take many more hundreds of millions of years."
collision (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:collision (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/mi
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I believe that such a collision would have absolutely no discernable effect on a solar system - you could work it out by computing the density of stars, and figuring how close another star would have to come to the solar system so that the tidal forces would perturb the planetary orbits, and the prob
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Oh, 3 BILLION years! (Score:2)
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Should I panic now or wait a billion years first.. (Score:1)
Intersting stuff.. but when you consider time scales like this what kind of practical applications does this have? Can anyone explain what knowledge is gained from these pretty pictures?
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, none? I suppose I could try to think of some technological offshoot of current astrophysical science, but to be safe let's just round down to 0. Is this "practicality" the metric by which you think we ought to measure all scientific findings?
Can anyone explain what knowledge is gained from these pretty pictures?
Ah, now this is easier. Watching a close interaction between galaxies helps understand collisions we see happening further away, and tightens constraints on cosmological and galactic evolution models (the latter is what I worked on). Of course the pretty pictures are shown to the public --- we're far more interested in the high-resolution spectra of these regions. Starburst regions are of intense interest because of the degree to which the nebulae are enriched promptly with elements like sulfer, silicon, and oxygen (from high-mass, short-lived stars). Then when we see these bright regions in more distant galaxies with a certain ratio of elemental abundances we can make a guess as to the age of the region and perhaps the embedding galaxy. The spectra of many regions also gives us dynamic information about the system's interaction, yielding a good estimate of the total mass interacting gravitationally. We can use these more precise measurements to constrain galactic dark matter models and distributions. And I'm sure there are a hundred other areas of specialized research that will be influenced by high-resolution data of galactic collisions.
Benefits? CCDs for one.. (Score:2)
Um, none? I suppose I could try to think of some technological offshoot of current astrophysical science, but to be safe let's just round down to 0. Is this "practicality" the metric by which you think we ought to measure all scientific findings?
In terms of the practical application of the results of the research.. I'd agree with you. However, if you look at the technological advances that have been catalyzed by astrphysics, people might be somewhat surprised.. CCDs were pretty much discarded after their
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It's all about perspective. (Score:2)
This helps people to understand what our galaxy will look like right about the time that they send their last check to Capital One, paying off that 30" display they used to enjoy looking at the high-res version of the picture in question.
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:1, Troll)
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PANIC NOW!!! (Score:1)
You may not appreciate it now, but six billion years from now you'll be glad that someone was paying attention.
Only six billion years to armageddon.
Have you built your bomb shelter ye
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:2)
It is interesting, which is why they're reporting this in the mass-media, and saving all the scientific breakthroughs, theory corroborations and nitty-gritty stuff in trade journals you don't read.
"but when you consider time scales like this what kind of practical applications does this have?"
None... none at all that I can see. Of course, you're assuming that to find this out was the point of the research, which is probably a very, very, very stupid thing to assume.
Which is more likely:
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:3, Interesting)
A greater understanding of the laws of gravity. We can construct simulations of colliding galaxies [hubblesite.org], but being able to see the real thing helps confirm those theories.
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:1)
Re:Should I panic now or wait a billion years firs (Score:1)
Survival of the human species. This is a social & political application, not scientific.
When you read the newspaper for the past 100 years, there's evidence the species might destroy itself. Often, wars happen because people don't understand their place in the universe. For example, a country can be run by people who believe a deity will save the faithful, so world turmoil and war is ok. Other times, wars are a symptom of tyranny (somebody wants "power").
Higher quality image (Score:5, Informative)
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This is (Score:1)
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what is this 10^8 number of years? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, instead of funding real science like the hubble and other versatile projects, we're funding crazy "man to mars" missions and finishing the ISS so that we can dump it into the ocean... we could probably stand to have a decent collider project here (on earth) also, to compete with some of the others that are soon to come online / being proposed. Either that or we can all move to mars, or wait for God to come back.
what do you mean? (Score:1)
As for colliders -- the last time colliders were fully funded (around the time the SSC was cancelled, many years ago) -- we spent half our national research budget on high-energy physics. That's excessive. There are many, many other interesting fields of science, from molecular biology to condensed matter physics to mesoscale material science to climate modeling. I don't see why HEP, admittedly interesting as it is, h
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Or maybe stopping the support for the hubble is in line with this, as all this research about billions-year old galaxies is of course blasphemous, while the our own solar system is of course only 6000 years old.
It's all so funny, I wish I could laugh about it :(
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But the Bible also says to go out and know the universe He buil
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to all Iron Maiden fans... (Score:1, Offtopic)
(Dave Murray, Blaze Bayley, Steve Harris)
- - -
my telescope looks out into the stars tonight
a little speck of light seems twice the size tonight
the calculations are so fine
can it be growing all the time?
now I can't believe it's true
and I don't know what to do
for the hundredth time I check the declination
now the fear starts to grow
even my computer shows
there are no errors in the calculations
now it's happened, take no other view
collision course, you must believe it's true
now there's no
To all Powerman 5000 fans... (Score:1)
By Powerman 5000
What is it really
That's going on here
You've got your system for total control
So is there really anybody out there
Now watch us suffer cause we can't go
What is it really that is in your head
What little life that you had just died
I'm gonna be the one that's takin over
Now this is what it's like when worlds collide
Are you ready to go
Cause I'm ready to go
What you gonna do baby baby
Are you going with me
Cause I'm going with you
It's the end of
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And to all Jim Reeves Fans.... (Score:2)
Slow photographer? (Score:2)
Man the guy operating the camera needs to be sacked! Oh wait, they mean the galaxies not the picture.
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> The sizes average between thousands and hundreds of thousand light years, containing ten million to one trillion stars.
Cut the guy some slack: Those were some amazingly large "snapshots".
Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hehehe, who says that? I can honestly say I've never had someone tell me, "Ya know science is ugly. I just don't understand why you think its beautiful. The fat thighs, the double chin. Seriously you're a chubby-chaser, a chubby-science-chaser."
Hahaha, who has conversations like that? What kind of arguments are you getting into with people? "Listen, I don't care what you thin
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I wonder... (Score:1)
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Naked eye with a big amateur scope (Score:5, Interesting)
I've tracked it down in my old 18" Newtonian/Dobsonian. With averted vision, you can see two "tails" twisting off the pair, much further out in the field than these Hubble images. Here's what it looks like in an amateur scope, but imagine it as just a dim hint in the eyepiece:
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1997/34/images
It's nothing at all like the Hubble image... just a hint of grey glow in the eyepiece, but still... there is something about seeing the actual photons from the object hitting your retina that's exciting, for us amateur astronomy geeks, anyway.
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Cool
Dupe? (Score:1, Funny)
If this isn't a dupe, it's bound to happen.
From the photo... (Score:3, Funny)
whoops (Score:1)
Old news! (Score:2, Funny)
Man, just can't get anything but old news around here. Digg reported this 499 million years ago!
There is life in those galaxies (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine what the people who live in those galaxies are thinking...
Some are watching the approaching onrush of supergiants, counting down their star system's remaining few thousand years of life.
Some are on a planet trapped in a dust cloud, wondering about the meaning of the dim legends that refer to bright points of light that once showed in the night sky.
Some are frantically transmitting radio signals to the rest of the universe, to announce "Look! I, too, was once alive."
Some are hauling themselves o
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Animation (Score:1)
Don't hold your breath... (Score:2)
You may be waiting some time on that one...