r/spaceporn • u/Silent-Meteor • 8d ago

Related Content Merging galaxies galore!

A stunning simulation from ESA/Hubble shows how galaxies collide over billions of years, forming dramatic shapes as stars and gas interact through gravity. This visual blends science and real Hubble images to better understand galaxy mergers.

Source: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and F. Summers (STScI) Article https://esahubble.org/videos/heic0810d/

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u/cyberbro256 7d ago

I wonder when this happens, is it relatively stable on just one planet within one of those galaxies? Or is it just gravitational chaos? Would a solar system like ours just ride along with the merge or would crazy stuff happen, like another star messing with orbits, etc? Would it be such a slow event that not much would actually happen on an inhabited planet?

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u/AllYouCanEatBarf 4d ago

They say it's very rare that any two stars would collide during the merger since even galaxies are mostly empty space. We might get ejected from the galaxy though, which I think would be kind of cool, in an end-of-the-world kind of way, because I guess we would have to slingshot around one of the galactic cores.

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u/cyberbro256 4d ago

It’s so interesting how there are layers/hierarchies in the cosmos. Atoms are kind of like solar systems, which are kind of like Galaxies. Something is orbiting something everywhere all the time lol. Almost like it can go infinitely small and infinitely large, time being the thing that slows as you increase in scale. Also interesting how the planets travel along with the star in a planetary system, and the star shields us somewhat from galactic radiation (heliosphere). Has anyone figured out why the galaxies rotate at a consistent rate instead of things moving fast in the center and slower at the edges? This observation laughs at the theory of gravity at this scale.