Introduction to translation:
Nothing remains the same, and the universe is in constant change, and the strangest form of this change is undoubtedly the process of merging galaxies, that epic dance between billions of stars, which scientists have studied carefully for decades, only to discover about a decade ago that our galaxy (our home in which we live) It is called the “Milky Way”) on its way to a similar merger with its neighbor “Andromeda”, and the question here is: What will happen to us at that moment? An interesting and accessible article by Marina Koren, editor of The Atlantic, sheds light on this.
Translation text:
Gravity can do some amazing things in the universe. While it plays a major role in keeping coffee from spilling on your shirt here on planet Earth, at the same time this invisible force forms a bond with the cosmic matter in space to pulverize gas and dust into radiant new stars, and smooth out rocks. The conglomerate in spherical planets, in addition to its most important role in crushing entire galaxies together. This process occurs when gravity continues its endeavor to push two or three galaxies or perhaps more towards each other until they all meet and their contents sway and mix in a slow chaos that reshapes all these galaxies into one large galactic ball.
Astronomers have monitored nearly every stage of this process, known as “galactic mergers”. The galaxies gather together at an early stage in this process, as if they are going to attend a very important space conference, and things go on like this until they move to the next stage, in which gravity plays a role in changing the original shapes of these galaxies so that in the end there is nothing left but an ocean of chaos all around. By then, the only sign of a merger will be a faint flash from stellar material orbiting this orb (the result of galaxy mergers).
The Gemini North telescope captured the latest image of this kind of the merger of the two galaxies NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 (they are called the Siamese twins or the Butterfly Galaxies). From interaction, but at some point the two galaxies will swing around each other, and the stars will fight inside them and new stars will be born, and these processes will continue until everything merges within 500 million years. Today, the two galaxies look like little paper hearts.
The merger of galaxies is one of the most fantastical events in the universe. While the spectacle of a supernova (a gigantic stellar explosion in which a star ejects its envelope into space at the end of its life) can leave us as amazed and amazed as the spectacle of collisions between black holes, intergalactic mergers have a grandeur. The magnificence is beyond other cosmic phenomena, as well as being wonderful material for daydreaming that can fuel our fantasies about extraterrestrial life.
Stuck in the midst of the merger of two galaxies
The two galaxies that we talked about previously are full of stars, and as we learned from observing our Milky Way galaxy, most stars revolve around planets, and this means that if we let a little free rein to our imaginations, we may reach the possibility that these galaxies are home to someone else, and if we assume that they were, This may lead us to an important question, which is: What will be the condition of a person who is immersed in the midst of a massive event, such as the merger of his galaxy with another galaxy?!
To answer a question like this, Vicente Rodriguez Gomez, an astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, explains the matter by saying: “The scene will be completely amazing as soon as the night falls, and the daylight fades, so you look at the sky at night to find it filled with newborn stars, and you will witness a torrent of streams.” Twisted stars, gas and dust all over the sky. But if you live along the outer edges of the galaxy, then the scene will be very picturesque, the night sky will appear less crowded with stars compared to the crowded center of the galaxy, and the place on the outskirts of the galaxy will allow you to observe the other galaxy merged with your galaxy as it sparkles in the dark with a size larger and brighter than any other star. The large galaxy hanging in the dark sky will be as much a fact of your presence in this astonishing event as a cratered Moon orbiting Earth.
The most exciting and exciting thing is that you can believe all of this without having a doubt about this information, explains Moya McTeer, astrophysicist and author of “The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy”. Despite the merger of the two galaxies, McTeer confirms that the possibility of your sun colliding with another star during this process is very unlikely, and goes on to explain by asking: “Have you ever seen a parade moving in unison through each other? This is the same way that stars follow in processes Galaxies merge, as they pass through each other seamlessly as uniformed musicians step on the grass.”
McTeer continues, saying: “There will definitely be more stars around our sun, but fortunately there is still a lot of space, and most of these stars will not be in danger of colliding with something else.” But if your planet is far, far out in the galaxy, then you might have a problem. The intense activity can loosen stars from the edges of the galaxy and catapult them into the depths of intergalactic space.
It is true that the stars during the merger process exceed each other accurately, but the distance between them may be a bit chaotic, and about that says Cihan Kartaltepe, an astrophysicist from the Rochester Institute of Technology who studies the formation of galaxies: “galaxies contain among them huge clouds of gas and dust, and what If galaxies overlap with each other until these huge clouds collide with each other and in the process create hazy pockets of gas and dust in the night sky, they eventually collapse under the influence of their own weight and fuse into completely new stars.”
More precisely, astronomers can monitor these regions that witnessed the stellar explosion by analyzing the snapshots of galaxy mergers that telescopes brought us, such as the snapshots monitored by the Hubble Space Telescope of the two antennae galaxies (Antennae Galaxies) (which are among the closest pairs of colliding galaxies to Earth, and are far from it). A distance of 65 million light-years), where the Hubble telescope showed that the collision between them occurred nearly 600 million years ago, and as a result the spiral structure of both galaxies was destroyed, and this collision resulted in groups of new stars that appear to be sparkling in the form of a flash of light blue color.
(Wikipedia)
The fate of the virtual population
When galaxies collide, the stellar material of these galaxies migrates to other parts of the galaxy, and the giant black holes – which scientists believe are located at the centers of most large galaxies – follow the same path and are also transported from their places. Meanwhile, black holes – which are invisible, extremely dense and supermassive objects – sweep other bodies such as hidden meteorites and some stars (which may swallow part of them during this journey).
To explain this process, Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at the University of Connecticut, and a researcher at the Computational Astrophysics Center of the Flatiron Institute in New York City, USA, who studies the fate of giant black holes during the process of galaxy merger, explains; It says, “When two galaxies begin to merge, their supermassive black holes plunge toward the center of this newly formed galaxy, and end up merging into one large black hole.”
But if we think a little, we may wonder about what might result in a collision of 3 galaxies, and about the fate of those black holes, so Mingarelli goes on to talk about that possibility, saying: “In the event of a collision of 3 galaxies, the most likely scenario is that two of them find each other.” Some and form a binary system, and when the third galaxy arrives and begins to overlap with the two previous galaxies, the least massive black hole among the three holes is completely expelled from the galaxy, and that means the possibility of a supermassive black hole wandering around the universe. But what we do not realize is that these phenomena take millions or perhaps billions of years to witness them.
That is why the hypothetical inhabitants of the Siamese twin galaxies, for example, would not notice any changes in their bright night sky over the course of their lifetime, but they might at least be sufficiently aware that they are in the midst of a massive galactic merger between their galaxy and another galaxy. As for the imagined astronomers there, they can sift through archival observations from previous generations and collect data to help scientists of the future. At some point it swallowed smaller galaxies.
As for the future of these galaxies, perhaps these imaginary astronomers will be able to predict the future features of their galaxy as well, as astronomers predicted here that our galaxy is on its way to a dramatic merger or radical transformation that will reshape almost everything after its collision with another spiral galaxy called Andromeda (or the Andromeda). ) which appears to us today as a spot of light reflected in the sky at night. So, what exactly will happen is that about 5 billion years from now the Andromeda Galaxy will become entangled with us, and as soon as that happens the spiral arms of our galaxy will disappear, as will our supermassive black hole.
These changes will occur in our galaxy, because the mass of our black hole is smaller than the black hole that is located in the center of the Andromeda galaxy, as the latter is 100 million times the mass of our sun, so it will soon swallow our black hole, which has a relatively smaller mass of four million times the mass of our sun. once. For her part, the astrophysicist Mingarelli says: “It will be like a rapid swallowing process that will not take time and will soon end immediately.”
Although intergalactic mergers will not lead to a tangible change on an individual’s personal level, they still provide an interesting environment for astronomers who may have the opportunity to witness the merger of their galaxy with another galaxy. Contrary to what is expected, being inside an isolated and unentangled galaxy may have negative aspects, because according to astrophysicist Moya McTeer, the location of our planet on the Milky Way, for example, does not provide us with the best view from which to study our home galaxy.
Confirming this, McTeer continues, explaining: “When trying to study our galaxy, we discover that what comes to the fore are large amounts of gas and dust that impede our observations, so we have to study other spiral galaxies to learn more about the behavior and evolution of spiral galaxies that are similar to ours. If it happens that You were lucky enough to discover another spiral galaxy that is closer to your galaxy, and appears to you at an angle that enables you to see most of its parts clearly, so you will be able to study this galaxy much easier than studying your own galaxy.
But on the other hand, if you happen to be an astronomer living in the midst of a galactic merger, it will be – contrary to what you expect – very frustrating, because if you extend your sight at night towards the horizon, you will discover that the sky is so crowded that it is difficult to detect distant objects. So concludes astronomer Rodriguez Gomez, saying: “In such an environment, it will be difficult to provide a clear view without pollutants caused by the merger process between the two galaxies that will eventually result in a bright galaxy that is supposed to be our home. If we let our imaginations run a little, we might imagine Another person observes from his distant position our galaxy in the midst of a radiant cosmic collision, and while contemplating it, he may end up sighing deeply in a quiet moment of daydreaming, wondering: You see, what would it be like if the same thing happened here?!
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This article is translated from The Atlantic It does not necessarily represent the site of Meydan.
Translated by: Somaya Zaher.
