All articles tagged with #galaxy collision
Using computer simulations, astronomers propose that a head-on collision with the Gaia Sausage dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago flipped the Milky Way's disc by more than 90 degrees, reshaping its bulge and halo and explaining the halo's slow rotation; the Gaia mission data helped reveal this ancient collision.
Astronomers using the Keck Observatory measured the faint galaxy NGC 1052-DF9 and found its stars move as if it lacks a dark-matter halo, joining DF2 and DF4 along a tight line in the NGC 1052 field and pointing to a past high-speed collision that stripped ordinary matter from dark matter. DF9’s velocity dispersion is about 6.5 km/s, implying a stellar mass around 100 million solar masses—far less than the halo a galaxy of its size would normally have. While this supports a collision scenario (similar in spirit to the Bullet Cluster), alternative explanations like tidal dwarfs exist, and a smoking-gun test would be detecting gas along the trail.
An amateur astrophotographer, Damian Meyer, captured a sharp deep-space image of the Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/NGC 4039) about 45 million light-years away, revealing tidal tails, dense star-forming regions, and gas streams as the galaxies collide, made with a Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 and careful exposure stacking.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope have detected the brightest and most distant hydroxyl gigamaser, produced when gas in colliding galaxies stimulates hydroxyl molecules to emit intense microwaves. The signal, traveling about 7.8–8 billion light-years, is magnified by a foreground galaxy acting as a gravitational lens, making it appear exceptionally bright. The discovery advances study of high-redshift OH megamasers and galaxy mergers and is published (preprint available) in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
Astronomers using JWST, Keck, the Very Large Array and Chandra X-ray data spotlight the “Infinity Galaxy,” a collision between two galaxies where a central black hole sits between the two cores and shows signs of active feeding. The team argues this could be a direct-collapse black hole formed in situ during the merger about 50 million years ago, potentially growing from a seed of a few hundred thousand solar masses to around a million, offering a rare glimpse of black-hole birth in action.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory captured images of two galaxies, IC 2163 and NGC 2207, beginning to collide, providing insights into galaxy mergers and evolution over cosmic timescales.
This week in science features a promising Alzheimer's drug tested in mice, a new theory about the purpose of the Bayeux Tapestry, the discovery of three colliding galaxies, insights into lactose tolerance in South Asian populations, a theoretical model explaining particle mass through extra dimensions, and advances in understanding schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using lab-grown mini-brains.
A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the intricate chaos of two colliding spiral galaxies, NGC 2207 and IC 2163, combining infrared and X-ray data to reveal the complex interactions and star formation processes during their gravitational merge.
Astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole, RBH-1, escaping its galaxy at nearly 1,000 km/s, leaving a trail of newborn stars and a shock front, confirming long-standing theories about black hole ejections during galaxy mergers, with implications for galaxy evolution and future discoveries.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed the existence of a runaway supermassive black hole, 10 million times the sun's mass, moving at 2.2 million mph through the Cosmic Owl galaxies, leaving a trail of star-forming gas and shock waves, and providing new insights into black hole ejections during galaxy mergers.
A large wave of star movements has been detected in the Milky Way using ESA's Gaia data, possibly caused by a past galaxy collision, but further research is needed to confirm its origin.
In about four billion years, the Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy, and while Voyager 1 and 2 will drift in interstellar space long after their power supplies fail, their survival through the collision is uncertain, with risks from stellar encounters, interstellar dust, gravitational deflections, and structural degradation, though they may persist as scattered remnants or debris, symbolizing humanity's first interstellar artifacts.
Astronomers have discovered the Infinity Galaxy, a collision remnant with a supermassive black hole forming in an unusual position, potentially revealing a new pathway for black hole formation in the early universe, observed through multiple telescopes including JWST and Keck.
Astronomers have discovered a unique galaxy shaped like an infinity symbol, which contains a newly formed supermassive black hole, potentially providing new insights into black hole formation in the early universe and supporting the heavy seeds theory. The discovery was made using data from the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories, marking a significant breakthrough in understanding cosmic evolution.
Astronomers using JWST images have potentially identified the first direct-collapse black hole in the Infinity Galaxy, a result that could explain the early formation of supermassive black holes in the universe. The black hole is located between two colliding galaxies' nuclei, suggesting it formed from dense gas in the aftermath of the collision, providing evidence for a direct-collapse formation scenario. Follow-up observations are ongoing to confirm this groundbreaking discovery.