The Hubble Telescope captures a massive galaxy collision that could take 500 million years to develop

I wrote in trends he 01/14/2024 00:00 AM

he Hubble Space Telescope It was able to capture a massive collision between two galaxies, an amazing phenomenon that would take almost as long 500 million years to develop.

Both groups of stars and more alien elements are in mid-collision At a very safe distance of about 570 million light-years from Earth.

It's about Arp 122It is a strange cosmic body that actually consists of two galaxies: NGC 6040a tilted and skewed spiral galaxy, and LEDA 59642, a swirling and foreground galaxy.

Looming in the lower left corner is an elliptical galaxy NGC 6041a central member of the galactic group in which it resides Arp 122but otherwise she does not participate in this brutal merger.

What are galaxy collisions?

Galactic collisions and mergers are hugely dynamic and dramatic events. It occurs when two galaxies collide and do not have enough momentum to continue the journey after the collision. Therefore, they come together little by little until they form one galaxy.

However, they occur on a very slow time scale, e.g. The Milky Way is on its way to collide with its closest galactic neighbourIt is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but these two galaxies are about four billion years away from us before they actually meet.

The collision and fusion process will not be quick either: it could take hundreds of millions of years to develop. AndThese collisions take a long time due to the truly enormous distances.“, explains NASA in a statement.

What are galaxies?

Galaxies are made up of stars, their solar systems, dust, gas, and invisible dark matter. Therefore, in galactic collisions, these constituent components can experience huge changes in the gravitational forces acting on them.

Over time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, sometimes eventually leading to a single galaxy merger. It is possible that this is the result of the collision shown by the scientific observer.

It is believed that Galaxies resulting from mergers have a regular or elliptical structureBecause the merger process changes more complex structures (such as those observed in spiral galaxies).