Our supergalactic plane is dotted with bright elliptical galaxies, but spiral galaxies are notably rare. Now new supercomputer simulations have found out why spiral galaxies are so rare. The Milky Way lies within the Local Supercluster on the supergalactic plane, a plane billions of light-years across on which large galaxy clusters are anchored. But on this giant plane, spiral galaxies are surprisingly rare, while bright elliptical galaxies are more common. Astronomers now believe that because frequent galaxy collisions have filled our neighborhood with elliptical galaxies, our Milky Way has somehow survived.
The researchers say the distribution of galaxies in the supergalactic plane is truly stunning. It is rare but not entirely abnormal, and the simulations reveal details of the galaxy formation process, such as the transformation of spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies through galaxy mergers. The local supercluster is a pancake-shaped structure composed of several huge galaxy clusters containing thousands of galaxies. The galaxies in these clusters are divided into two major categories: one is the elliptical galaxy, which is filled with ancient stars and consists of huge Supermassive black holes support; the other type are spiral galaxies like ours, which have smaller supermassive black holes at their centers and many young stars still forming along their slender spiral arms. However, since the 1950s, the French astronomer Gérard. Scientists have noticed this puzzling difference since Gérard de Vaucouleurs discovered this plane.
The unusual distribution of elliptical and spiral galaxies in the local supercluster.
To study the evolution of our cosmic neighborhood, researchers used the Simulations Beyond the Local Universe (SIBELIUS) supercomputer to build a model that traces the observed evolution of galaxies back to the beginning of the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Accurately reproduce the evolution process. During the simulation, the researchers found that spiral galaxies in dense clusters of supergalactic planes often collide with each other in catastrophic collisions, smoothing their fragile spiral arms into elliptical galaxies, and this process will also turn more of them into elliptical galaxies. Material is pushed against the supermassive black hole of the collided galaxy, making the black hole even larger. The team is now working to improve the simulations and make them more accurate to further compare what we know about fundamental physical processes with telescopic observations. And in the just-published study, its simulations produced results that were exactly consistent with what was observed. Relevant research results were published in “Nature Astronomy” (Nature Astronomy) journal.
