Dethateer wrote...
Better yet, would they actually absorb each other?
I've found it. Unlike what I wrote earlier results are in and Kip Thorne didn't have anything to do with it. In short this is it...
The universe is expanding at an increasing rate. It is accelerating. Everything is moving away from us, except the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a collision course. In two billion years they will meet for the first time. Because space between star systems is huge actual collisions can happen, but are very unlikely. It will stir things up a bit, though. Much like a pendulum Andromeda will pass us and bounce back and that repeats over and over again, until after 5 billion years the two galaxies will finally merge permanently. This process will be violent of course. The merged galaxies will be called Milkomeda (pun intended, but no kidding). Hehe.
Each galaxy has a massive black hole at its center. In the end the two black holes will merge, but before that happens one will kick the other away a bit. Two years ago a computer simulation ran that shows that this scenario is likely to happen.
This is consistent with observations of other galaxies that already have merged. Such galaxies have an ellipsoid shape. But due to the age of both galaxies "Milkomeda" will look a bit different, because there is less gas in it than earlier merged galaxies. In the Milkyway and Andromeda more star formations already took place using that gas.
The guy that knows a lot about this is Professor Abraham Loeb.
Source:
What is the Far Far Future of the Universe? (Abraham Loeb).
Because the universe is expanding our (merged) galaxy eventually will move away from itself too. Because the nature of dark energy is yet unknown (cosmologist Max Tegmark calls dark energy "a code word for our ignorance") we are unsure what will happen. It can end in one of three scenarios: the Big Rip, the Big Chill or the Big Crunch. This last one was ruled out earlier, but is under investigation again.
Source:
What is the Far Far Future of the Universe? (Max Tegmark).
According to Lee Smolin the story does not end that simple. He and others believe that black holes not only have a role at the center of galaxies, but black holes also have a role in the creation of universes. Much like natural selection in biology there is something going on like that during the creation of universes by black holes. Some universes will fail and others survive due to the condition of the state of these black holes during the creation of these universes.
Source:
What do Black Holes and Dark Matter Reveal? (Lee Smolin).
Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 16 avril 2010 - 09:33 .