|
|
Post by MartinT on Dec 15, 2019 12:53:05 GMT
When you think about how challenging it will be just getting around our solar system, and we are a speck in the Milky Way, those other galaxies are truly unattainable targets. The planets are mostly measurable in light-minutes distance and yet will take months or more to travel to. The closest stars will take generation ships. Any further is unthinkable.
|
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Dec 15, 2019 13:05:31 GMT
Who knows, we certainly don't understand everything about physics, far from it ...  |
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Dec 15, 2019 13:54:50 GMT
Agreed, but FTL really will take something momentous to conjure up. I think the speed of light is a good way of keeping us and other alien races compartmentalised and separate from each other, destined never to meet. Perhaps that's a good thing.
|
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Dec 15, 2019 15:03:46 GMT
Agreed, but FTL really will take something momentous to conjure up. I think the speed of light is a good way of keeping us and other alien races compartmentalised and separate from each other, destined never to meet. Perhaps that's a good thing. Yes, the speed of light constraint and also the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics seem to me to be an excellent way of hugely simplifying interactions and the way things behave. It's what a programmer might design in to a simulation of a universe in order to reduce the processing power needed to run it .............  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality |
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Dec 15, 2019 15:48:13 GMT
LOL - good analogy!
|
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Dec 16, 2019 13:37:26 GMT
I've featured this galaxy before on account of its twin super massive black holes, but here's a great wider angle photo.  NGC 6240 lies 400 million light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Holder). It’s about 300 000 light-years in diameter. 🌌 Its distorted appearance is a result of a galactic merger. This merger sparked bursts of new star formation and triggered many hot young stars to explode as supernovae(e.g. SN 2013dc). At the centre of NGC 6240 are two supermassive black holes spiraling closer and closer to one another and will soon form a single immense black hole. |
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Dec 16, 2019 13:52:39 GMT
and will soon form a single immense black hole. I'm suspicious of 'soon'. A few years or a few thousand years? I wonder what happens when two black holes merge. Nothing good, I'm sure, but could be spectacular. |
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Dec 16, 2019 14:16:30 GMT
A few million years, I would guess. A tiny fraction of 1% of the whole merger timescale. So it is 'soon' in that context.
A SMBH merger must be quite cataclysmic for its immediate surroundings, although we would mainly detect from the gravitational waves created by the distortions created in the 'fabric' of space.
|
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Feb 19, 2020 7:16:10 GMT
Truly stunning image of an unusual galaxy - a spiral seen almost edge-on, with amazing dust lanes in its disc. UGC 12591 is the second most massive known spiral galaxy at 4 times that of the Milky Way, after ISOHDFS 27. It is located about 400 million light years away from the Earth in the constellation Pegasus. In addition, it is the spiral galaxy with the highest known rotational speed of about 500 km/s, almost twice that of our galaxy, the Milky Way; its oddities may result from a collision/merger.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGC_12591And just look at all those gaaxies scattered in the background.  |
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Feb 19, 2020 7:51:56 GMT
Each galaxy could contain life, but pretty much isolated, due to the distances, from any other galaxy.
|
|
