Posted on 10/12/2008 3:30:21 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new wider view of two very well-known galaxies has revealed a big surprise: They are connected by faint, starless filaments of hydrogen gas which trace back to a very high-speed intergalactic collision. The smash-up between galaxies M86 and NGC4438 not been suspected before, and may explain why M86, which is visible to the naked eye, is unable to give birth to new stars... During galactic smash-ups stars rarely collide, since there is so much space between them. But gases do slam into gases. The faster the collision, the higher the temperature the gases reach. In the case of M86, its gases are millions of degrees and radiate in X-rays. Until now, however, there was no easy explanation for all this blistering hot gas. The new evidence of M86's collision may solve that mystery. What's more, the super-hot gas also probably explains why M86 is unable to produce new stars. To make stars you need colossal clouds of frigid gas that will collapse to begin star-producing nuclear reactions... [page 2] Keel said he is hoping Kenney and his colleagues will search for more telltale gas filaments between other galaxies in the Virgo cluster, where both M86 and NGC 4438 reside. M86 is the brightest galaxy in the Virgo cluster, a neighbor galaxy cluster about 50 million light-years away from our own Local Group cluster.
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
Telling Tendrils: A deep new image of part of the Virgo cluster has revealed monumental tendrils of ionized hydrogen gas 400,000 light-years long connecting the elliptical galaxy M86 (right) and the disturbed spiral galaxy NGC 4438 (left). The filaments of hydrogen gas trace back to a very high-speed intergalactic collision. [Tomer Tal and Jeffrey Kenney/Yale University and NOAO/AURA/NS]
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Looks strangely like the Cheshire Cat.
So if the red filaments are ionized hydrogen gas, what are the green filaments coming from the galaxy in the lower-right of the photo? If they were explained in the article I missed that...
I don't see it...
Have some chocolate. It will make you see things in a whole new way... ;o])
Invaders from Irkin.
again, haven't you???
I...er...I didn’t want them to go to waste and they were just sitting there and no one was watching and the champagne was getting warm and I thought I would keep them both from getting stale.
:licking chocolate off fingers:
(I didn’t think you’d notice.)
They’ve decorated early for Christmas. ;’)
I thought this one looked more like a Halton Arp topic though.
Is it time for an intervention? ;’)
More where these came from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2103309/posts?page=13#13
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2085916/posts?page=994#994
Intergalactic hay-fever?
Halton Arp: Galileo
(Would that be chocolate, bouncing around the lower left of your post?...)
*she asks, breathlessly*
Galaxies shouldn’t drink and drive.
A goldfish, I think 
Where? 
I’M DOOMED!!!!
(Sensory overload!)
:oþ
(I’m sorry I read your tagline...)
run it backwards and let's see what happened.
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