Timothy Birdnow

In a cosmic gaem of Pacman the Milky Way Galaxy gobbled up no less than 11 smaller galaxies in an orgy of ravenous consumption.

Research conducted by the Dark Energy Survey shows that there are at least eleven such streams visible in the portion of sky the three year old project hs studied. From the article: "The data cover about 5,000 square degrees, or one-eighth of the entire sky, and include roughly 40,000 exposures taken with the Dark Energy Camera. The images correspond to hundreds of terabytes of data and are being released along with catalogs of hundreds of millions of galaxies and stars.

"We can use these streams to measure the amount, distribution, and ‘clumpiness’ of dark matter in the Milky Way.”

[...]

"The Dark Energy Camera, the primary observation tool of the Dark Energy Survey, is one of the most powerful digital imaging devices in existence. It was built and tested at Fermilab, the lead laboratory on the Dark Energy Survey, and is mounted on the National Science Foundation’s 4-meter Blanco telescope in Chile. A team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign then processes the DES images.

A growing galaxy

One new discovery enabled by the data set is the detection of 11 new streams of stars around our Milky Way.

Our home galaxy is surrounded by a massive halo of dark matter, which exerts a powerful gravitational pull on smaller, nearby galaxies. The Milky Way grows by pulling in, ripping apart, and absorbing these smaller systems. As stars are torn away, they form streams across the sky that the Dark Energy Camera can detect."

End excerpts.

Galaxies collide all the time. In four billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda are set to crash together As National Geographic points out:

"In fact, our solar system is going to outlive our galaxy. At that point, the sun will not yet be a red giant star – but it will have grown bright enough to roast Earth’s surface. Any life forms still there, though, will be treated to some pretty spectacular cosmic choreography.

Currently, Andromeda and the Milky Way are about 2.5 million light-years apart. Fueled by gravity, the two galaxies are hurtling toward one another at 402,000 kilometers per hour. But even at that speed, they won’t meet for another four billion years. Then, the two galaxies will collide head-on and fly through one another, leaving gassy, starry tendrils in their wakes. For eons, the pair will continue to come together and fly apart, scrambling stars and redrawing constellations until eventually, after a billion or so years have passed, the two galaxies merge."

End excerpt.

I'm scared; the Earth has been around longer than the amount of time it will take for the galaxies to collide. I'll bet that global warming will be in full swing by then!

And no doubt the Left will find some way to blame the deaths of the eleven eaten galaxies on evil white men. It's racism, pure and simple! The big white galaxy swallowing up the smaller darker ones!

All joking aside, it's humbling to think about just how huge the Universe really is, and how tiny is Man in the grand scheme of things.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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