Milky Way eats Galaxy

[I, Brian]

This is a little big story.

Little, because it's only a news item on the BBC website.

Big, because the implications are profound. This touches on a range of inter-connected issues, from the Nemesis theory to mass extinctions.

It's partly worrying, because science is slowly but surely catching up on some profound new theories I developed in 1997 - which are very firmly in "Emperor". Hopefully I'll be published with it before popular science catches up.

Anyway, I promise you this: the significant of the article is quite profound. Even if you don't see it yet, remember where you first read it.

Here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3142582.stm

'Alien' stars invade Milky Way

Thousands of stars stripped from a nearby dwarf galaxy are streaming through our own Milky Way, according to astronomers.

These "alien" stars could at times be close to our Sun, they say.

The interlopers were spotted on a new survey of the entire sky.

This allowed them to remove obscuring foreground objects and get a good look at what lies around our Milky Way.

Torn apart and devoured

Using data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2Mass) - a study of the sky in infrared light - astronomers are showing that our Milky Way is devouring one of its neighbours.

The analysis is the first to map the full extent of the nearby Sagittarius galaxy, showing how this galaxy, which is 10,000 times smaller in mass than our own, is being stretched out - torn apart and devoured by our Milky Way.

"It's clear who's the bully in the interaction," says Steven Majewski, professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia, US.

"If people had infrared-sensitive eyes, the entrails of Sagittarius would be a prominent fixture sweeping across our sky."

The cosmic violence cannot be seen easily because of the stars, gas and dust that are in the way.

To get a better view, astronomers used the 2Mass infrared maps and digitally removed millions of foreground stars to leave a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars act as tracers because they are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way.

"We sifted several thousand interesting stars from a catalogue of half a billion," says professor Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.

"By tuning our maps of the sky to the right kind of star, the Sagittarius system jumped into view."

Majewski adds: "This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way."

The new image shows that stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of our Milky Way have been ripped from Sagittarius by our Milky Way's gravity.

The end of Sagittarius

"Astronomers used to view galaxy formation as an event that happened in the distant past," says David Spergel, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University, US, after viewing the new findings. "These observations reinforce the idea that galaxy formation is not an event, but an ongoing process."

And Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts, US, says: "After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer.

"We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system."

Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris.

"For only a few percent of its 240-million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski says.

"Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down on to our present position in the Milky Way. "Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination."

[Gnome]

OMG...I exist in an evil galaxy that is tearing apart another named for my birth constellation.....whatever could it all mean!??!?!?

Does this make me somehow responsible?!??!?

Will there be a backlash from centaurs?!!!???

Will Mona find true love with Eric, the handsome astronomer?!?!!?

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting answers on "When Galaxies Collide".

[littlemissattitude]

This is fascinating. Kind of makes me laugh at the astronomers, though.

"Astronomers used to view galaxy formation as an event that happened in the distant past," says David Spergel, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University, US, after viewing the new findings. "These observations reinforce the idea that galaxy formation is not an event, but an ongoing process."

Well, duh! Didn't any of these guys ever take geology? If the earth is a dynamic system - which it is, with plate tectonics continually remaking the face of the earth, even if at a slow rate - why wouldn't it ever occur to them that the universe is also a dynamic system? I mean, things do move in the universe, and so wouldn't that mean that sometimes one galaxy would get in the way of another? We've already seen pictures of other galaxies colliding. Stands to reason that ours might, as well. Doesn't it?

And, Gnome...I always knew the whole universe is a giant soap opera. Cool, huh?