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Galaxy Orbits - Another Mystery


LaurieAG

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So it looks like there is another mystery with regards to galaxy orbits that involves the orbits of Dwarf galaxies within larger galaxies. Hopefully the GAIA survey will shed some light on the matter.

 

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/07/23/galaxy-orbits-betray-neatnik-universe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20DiscoverTopStories%20%28Discover%20Top%20Stories%29&utm_content=FeedBurner#.U9A4hfmSySo

 

Orderly Mystery

Again, this goes against expectations, so it’s not clear yet why smaller galaxies should prefer to orbit within well-defined disks. It could be that the current models and simulations aren’t powerful enough yet, and can’t account for all the subtle factors at play in a galaxy’s orbit. Or, it could mean there’s some essential knowledge gap in our understanding of the cosmos, from something unexpected influences in gas flow patterns to something as fundamental as misunderstanding gravity itself. Only time will tell what brings about this unexpected order.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Given a chance, everything in space spins. As spinning moons spin around planets, so smaller spinning galaxies spin around larger galaxies. Though galaxies are made up of hundreds of billions of smaller bodies, gravitationally here they behave as one large body.

 

Though we don't know exactly what it is, I like to think of gravity as something falling in an unknown direction towards it's centre, which we see as a spin (since the object cannot literally collapse into itself, so it will "fall" and so spin, forever.)

 

Just an idea.

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