What Really Happens When Galaxies Collide
The Milky Way is on a crash course with the Andromeda galaxy, but what would a galactic collision actually look like? What Happens When Galaxies Die? - https://youtu.be/wWvJVE5nio4 Read...
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It might be odd to get your head around, but galaxies can and do collide. But far from an wild party of death, galaxies collisions yield hotbeds for new star formation, leading astronomers to suspect that this not-so-violent event is actually a driving factor behind galactic evolution. The big question here is how can galaxies collide and not just destroy everything? It helps to think about what a galaxy really is. Every galaxy is made up of some 100 billion stars with planets orbiting their host stars, but those stars are really far apart. Take the Milky Way for example. We’re about here on the edge of a spiral arm called Orion Spur. It looks crowded in our little neighborhood, but our nearest neighbor Alpha Centuri A, is actually 4.3 light years away. So ...
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It might be odd to get your head around, but galaxies can and do collide. But far from an wild party of death, galaxies collisions yield hotbeds for new star formation, leading astronomers to suspect that this not-so-violent event is actually a driving factor behind galactic evolution. The big question here is how can galaxies collide and not just destroy everything? It helps to think about what a galaxy really is. Every galaxy is made up of some 100 billion stars with planets orbiting their host stars, but those stars are really far apart. Take the Milky Way for example. We’re about here on the edge of a spiral arm called Orion Spur. It looks crowded in our little neighborhood, but our nearest neighbor Alpha Centuri A, is actually 4.3 light years away. So ...
