Thursday, February 24, 2005
Galactic Pile-up
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory reported that our neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy and most other spiral galaxies are the result of titanic galactic collisions that took place some 8 billion years ago. The reigning theory has been that galaxy formation ended by then.
They also say that at least half the starts visible in the night sky were produced four to eight billion years ago in "episodic bursts of intense star formation," during the galactic mergers when the galaxies were still active star hatcheries.
In a twist, they also say that our own Milky Way somehow escaped these crashes. Click on the headline for collision details.
They also say that at least half the starts visible in the night sky were produced four to eight billion years ago in "episodic bursts of intense star formation," during the galactic mergers when the galaxies were still active star hatcheries.
In a twist, they also say that our own Milky Way somehow escaped these crashes. Click on the headline for collision details.
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Great comment. Here's the short answer. In the beginning the universe was filled only with hydrogen. This hydrogen coalesced into so-called blue giant stars, or Population III stars. They were supermassive stars, which burned their fuel so quickly that their lifespan was only a few million years, not billions of years. (The bigger the star, the brighter and faster it burns.) Therefore, thousands of generations of these massive stars could have been born and died since the beginning of the universe.
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