Hubble Telescope Captures Violent Interstellar Drama, witnesses a Spiral Galaxy getting torn apart

Hubble observed the spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 getting torn apart as it made its way through the galaxy cluster Abell 3627, also known as the Norma Cluster

Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 never had a chance to survive its encounter with the Norma Cluster as it was just one galaxy against many. Galaxy cluster Abell 3627, located around 200 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy, contains hundreds, or even thousands, of galaxies bound together by gravity.

The galaxy cluster is surrounded by hot gas and is in the process of stripping spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 of young stars. In the Hubble photo, the hot young stars, along with surrounding gas, being ripped away from the spiral galaxy by Abell 3627 are seen as blue streaks.

Source

According to the Hubble release, the process is known as ram pressure stripping. In this case, the superheated plasma, reaching temperatures of 100 million degrees Fahrenheit, at the center of Abell 3627 is putting pressure on ESO 137-001, leading to a drag force that is ripping the young stars and gas from the spiral galaxy. This process can also occur to galaxies within the cluster.

Thought I would share this with those that might find this interesting

reply to post by snarky412


Think anybody lived there?

Always was an astronomy buff. Hard to wrap your head around is what your looking at is already history by hundreds of millions of years.

reply to post by ItCameFromOuterSpace

Think anybody lived there?

Anything is possible....can't help but wonder
It's an awful big Universe just to be us here

This part,

Galaxy cluster Abell 3627, located around 200 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy, contains hundreds, or even thousands, of galaxies bound together by gravity.

Just....wow!
I never knew galaxies could do that. So where does the gravity that binds them come from, would it be a cumulative effect?

reply to post by cprnicus


Yes! I'm very interested in space exploration, but it's always been hard for me to get my brain into "This is Old News" mode....

so - everything we see in the sky is perhaps already dead, right?

So it follows then to wonder - does that mean that 2000 years ago they had different "stars"?
Or 50,000 years ago?

And the zodiac is really old, isn't it?

BuzzyWigs
so - everything we see in the sky is perhaps already dead, right?

I believe the closest star to our sun is ~ 4.24 light years away so I doubt it has burned out yet, but we will know for sure in a little over 4 years...

reply to post by Elton

I hope I live long enough to see it!!

I've always been baffled by 'physics' and when I was in college, it was the only class (required science course with lab) that I got a D in.

When I was in eighth grade, they advanced me to algebra....then to geometry/trig. But in 10th grade it came to calculus and it went WHOOSH over my head.

Maths (that's the new word, right? "Maths") were never easy-peasy for me....
at calculus, I just gave up.

But - I have really good "spatial" reasoning. I can pack the back of an SUV using every square inch of space!

reply to post by weirdguy



If we knew where the gravity came from we'd all be cruising around in
flying cars and asking questions like; "Where would you like to vacation,
Jupiter or Mars?"

reply to post by weirdguy


I'm betting you're thinking that it' something other than gravity, aren't you?

It's interesting to see the mental gymnastics academics get up to to maintain standard model tenets when faed by things such as this:

A new study in 2006 has found that spiral galaxies line up like beads on a string, with their spin axes aligned with the filaments that outline voids

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/ma5224f2ed.jpg[/atsimg]

Large Scale Structure

reply to post by jadedANDcynical


Thanks for that, it's a very interesting read.

The thing that amazes me the most about colliding galaxies is that when two galaxies pass through each other nothing actually "collides" in a physical sense because of the still vast distances between stars. Very very very very unlikely two stars out of the tillions would come close to colliding into each other.
It's the gravity and perhaps dark matter that causes everything to fly apart

reply to post by jadedANDcynical


The first thing that popped into my mind after seeing that image was "Eddies". Now that I've pondered it a bit, I don't see why eddies wouldn't be somewhat normal in the universe, motion encourages more motion. It makes me wonder if the universe's behavior is more close to that of an ocean than we realize, perhaps it's just hopping with waves, tides and currents that we're not yet fully aware of (think big, way beyond the "interstellar highways" ideas we've been hearing about in conjunction with Voyager)

Yes water. That is what it seems to be like. its an ocean.