Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way

It's estimated that this collision will happen 20 to 40 million years from now, according to this. Stop being scared now. Collisions between galaxies involve events that take millions of years to unfold.

We are able to see it rubbing up against the outer atmosphere of the Milky Way," Lockman told SPACE.com. "It's not only coming in, it's starting to push up gas in front of it."

reply to post by mattifikation
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This is also from an article in Jan 2008.
Link:
www.space.com...

I think in 2008 that if it was 'brushing' the Milky Way, and is moving at speeds of 540,000 mph , there is a possibility that the newer articles on this subject might be more acurate as to when earth and the other planets may start to show signs of this impending collision, even if it will be 40 million years until full engagement.

[edit on 23-11-2009 by space cadet]

[edit on 23-11-2009 by space cadet]

reply to post by mattifikation


You may be right but I don't trust those scientists anymore.....how many times have they been wrong and come back to change their theories. To start with they underestimated the size of the whole thing and since we don't know much about dark matter we can't say there is no threat.

Nice image here of what it would look like coming in:

news.softpedia.com...

It's been a long time since they were off by 20 million years. I'm starting to wonder if you truly comprehend what an immense amount of time it takes for galactic-scale events to occur.

Take a look at this:

These processes can radically affect the galaxies. For example, two spiral galaxies can merge to form an elliptical galaxy. Have a look at the series of images below that guide you through such a merger. Be careful about your interpretation of such images though! Since galaxies that collide with one another will take millions of years to merge (which is very quick on the astronomical time scale!), we cannot observe their evolution.

Do you know why it takes millions of years? Because of the sheer size of galaxies, that's why. It's not because we think galaxies move slowly, and there's a possibility that they actually move fast. No, it's because even if they moved at the speed of light - the fastest speed possible - it would still take thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years for matter to cross the distances involved with two colliding galaxies.

I think many people on this thread are failing to take into consideration the extreme vastness of distances involved here.

This cannot be the same one discovered in 2005. If, as previously stated, it was an estimated 50 million light years away, then even travelling AT the speed of light, it would still take 50 million years to get here and if it was travelling towards us at the speed of light, by the time we saw it, we'd be hit by it.

I doubt this will really cause us any problems, as the Milky Way is about 100,000 Light years in diameter and we are about 26,000 light years from the galactic centre. If this dark galaxy has only recently started to crash into the Milky Way, then I'd say we have a good few thousand years until it has any affect on the Solar System, if any at all.

So smile and be happy, we're not all going to die today. We'll just have to wait for TPTB to sort that out for us

[Edit to add] Sorry mattifikation, I didn't see your post until after I wrote this. I guess great minds do think alike

[edit on 23-11-2009 by nik1halo]

reply to post by rattan1


Should we be worried about this?
well, no.

If it wipes us all out and destroys all the earth, what exactly are we able to do about that anyway?

same with the idea of nibiru, if there was a dark star and another solar system imminently crashing into our solar system, what exactly could we do about that?

nothing. accept it when it comes and live life and enjoy it while you can instead of wringing your hands about things you can do absolutely zero zip nada nothing about.

Dark matter is only theoretical... not factual! For all we know, it's just as likely to be a cloaked Spaghetti Monster. Interesting nonetheless!

IRM

Originally posted by rattan1


Sorry if I am posting this on the wrong board.


Should we be worried about this. I don't know much about dark Galaxies and if they have any gravity pulls or whatever but this is certainly bigger than Planet X.
Nope. Your descendants 20-40 million years from now might.

"What's more, its trajectory suggests it punched through the disc of our galaxy once before, about 70 million years ago."

did we have any mass extinction 70M years ago??????

I wonder what other things are invisible lurking close to us we don't know about.
This is not "dark matter" but is referred to as a dark galaxy because it is not detectable in the visigle light range. It was detected 46 years ago by people in West Virginia using a radio telescope. This is not breaking news.

Might I ask? Where is the conspiracy here?


(visitthe link for the full news article)

I happens sometimes that galaxies collide but the stars are so far from each other that planets almost never collide.

Originally posted by JayinAR
This is pretty interesting.
The idea of an invisible Galaxy boggles my mind.
I wonder what that means exactly. Also, it makes me wonder about how it is going to interact with our own galaxy.

Very odd. Looking forward to reading more about it.
S&F [/quote

It's only invisible to your eyes. If you could detect electromagnetic energy in the 200 KHz to 800 MHz frequencies, you could see Smith's Cloud.

Originally posted by loner007
Whats more alarming is that EVERY galaxy has a blackhole as its centre. So which part of our galaxy is this occuring. If it was on ourside of the galaxy then theres nothing to stop it from eating us up :p

You're right -- if a supermassive black hole was close enough, it could be a bad day for us.

However, the gravitational effects of a black hole is very localized. For example, if our Sun became a black hole, the Earth is far enough away that the Earth's orbit would not be affected (i.e. we would not get sucked in).

Of course a supermassive black hole such as the one hypothesized to be in the center of our galaxy would have a more far-reaching affect, our solar system is far enough away that there is no danger of us getting sucked in.

Some scientists think there may be as many as 10,000 smaller black holes surrounding the supermassive one in the center. There are probably smaller black holes closer to us than the galactic center. Scientists say there is a black hole only 1600 lightyears away from us (practically in our "neighborhood), but it is too small and/or too far away to affect us.

The mass of this black hole is estimated to be 5 to 20 times that of our Sun, so that means that, theoretically, a scientist who wanted to study this black hole could perhaps get as close as Pluto is to our Sun and still not get sucked into it.

[edit on 11/23/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by rattan1
Bellow is a Wikipedia definition of Dark Galaxy:

A dark galaxy is a galaxy-sized object containing very few or no stars (hence 'dark'). Held together by dark matter, it may also contain gas and dust. No dark galaxy with a black hole as a center has yet been discovered.

The above states that it is all held together by Dark matter and we know very little about dark matter. I wonder if it can disturb the Oort cloud

I am also puzzled by the fact that it can rip through our galaxy without merging with it

This is a huge, perhaps cosmic, science FAIL on the part of Wikipedia. Again.
A 'dark' object like Smith's Cloud is dark ojnly because we can't see it with our eyes. It is made up of hydrogen, both monatomic and diatomic. That H or H2 interacts absolutely normally with other matter. Each atom has a mass which is gravitationally attracted to each other atom according to the M1*M2/d^2 equation.
Dark Matter, as that term is used to describe observations in orbital mechanics,and as misused by people who want to sound like they are educated in astrophysics, is most certainly made up of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOS) like primordial black holes, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) or possibly neutrinos.They eminate absolutely no EMR, hence no photons, hence being dark, but do have mass
As A PhD sciwntist, I immediately look for pseudoscientific quackery whenever I see Wikipedia cited. I am rarely disappointed

Edit to add:
And about ripping through without merging:
Although a hrdrogen atom doesn't weigh much and it takes 622,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them to weigh a gram, each one has inertia. And with Smith's being a million solar masses (10^9) times 1.99X10^30kg, moving at 250 km/second,that is a gob, as we say in Appalachia, of inertia. Gravity is a relatively weak force, much weaker than the electromagnetic force.
And think about it. Gravity will increase the inertial force as the cloud gets closer, since it will accelerate the hydrogen atoms as they get closer. A merger is possible under some conditions, but those conditions don't exist here. For one, the impact angle is 45 degrees, far too acute for gravity to have much effect on the inertial vector.

[edit on 23-11-2009 by 4nsicphd]

Originally posted by rattan1
The above states that it is all held together by Dark matter and we know very little about dark matter.

We understand about the same amount regarding gravity ... a force we've known about for hundreds of years. Yet, the fundamentals and laws of which still elude the scientific community.

Right now scientist are trying to piece together a picture of our universe, but it's like putting a puzzle together upside down ... in a dark room.

Yes, we know very little about dark matter but, I'm afraid until we fully understand some of the basic of the way our universe functions, like what gravity truly is and how it functions, we're going to understand even less about things like dark matter.

Interesting article.

F'd and the S.

its interesting but im sure nothing will happen to us...if its happened before it will probly happen again and if nothing happened the first time then nothing will probly happen the next time. i could be completely wrong but im not gonna be worrying about it any time soon

reply to post by 4nsicphd

The dark galaxy in question is hypothesized to be made up of hydrogen and plenty of dark matter (not just hydrogen). There may be enough hydrogen for stars to have developed. The quote in Wikipedia concerning the fact that no dark galaxy is know to have a supermassive black hole is still valid.

Wikipedia is only as good as its references and sources. Wikipedia is not a source of information, but rather a clearinghouse for those sources.

reply to post by JayinAR


In the article it says its a "cloud of hydrogen" with the size of a galaxy. From what I understand, its not an actual galaxy full of stars and planets. Just a huge mass of hydrogen.

Id like to think of it as a big source of fuel entering the galaxy.. it could be a positive thing, in terms of creation.

The galaxy is about 12 kiloparsecs away from us, That's about 40,000 light years, which would be 370 x 10^15 kilometers. That's 370, then add 15 more zeros to get the number. According to the article I cited, the galaxy is moving at 300 km/second. So to reach here would take roughly 10^15 seconds, or about 40 million years. So either it was here 40 million years ago, or else it's going to arrive in that amount of time.

Anything that happens at this level of magnitude is so beyond our sphere of influence that trying to understand it is nothing outside of an academic exercise.

Really, if and when something dramatic happens at the level of galaxies, we will be sitting ducks; or maybe just more dust for the clouds.

But it is interesting. I guess we can try and enjoy the show, because that is all we will be able to do.

reply to post by rattan1


This one was found in 1963. It is 1000 parsecs wide and the core of Smith's Cloud is aimed at the edge of our galaxy, 1 half of the diameter of the galaxy (or 50,000 light years) away. That means the nearest hydrogen atom in Smith's Cloud will be about 48,600 light yerars away, give or take a few molecular diameters. And that won't be for about 30,000,000 years so don't worry, be happy.

A little science trivia: Smith's cloud was discovered, not by Hubble or one of the famous observatories in CA or AZ, but by a bunch of folks in West By God Virginia. Go Warriors! (Pocahontas County High School.)