银河系注定要与仙女座相撞
(原标题: Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending)
2022-06-06
浏览次数: 17
我们的银河系有一天会和它更大的邻居仙女座星系相撞吗？很有可能，是的。哈勃太空望远镜最近拍摄的图像显示，M31的恒星相对于背景星系的轻微位移表明，M31的中心可能正处于与我们银河系中心直接碰撞的轨道上。尽管如此，横向速度的误差似乎足够大，以至于两个星系的中心部分很有可能会有轻微的偏离，但会足够近，以至于它们的外部光晕会产生引力纠缠。一旦发生这种情况，这两个星系将被捆绑在一起，跳舞，并最终合并成一个巨大的椭圆星系——在接下来的几十亿年里。这里的图片组合描绘了一个世界（地球？）的天空在遥远的未来，当每个星系的外部部分开始碰撞。我们银河系和整个周围的本星系群的确切未来很可能在未来几年仍然是一个活跃的研究主题。
查看原文解释
Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home galaxy. Still, the errors in sideways velocity appear sufficiently large to admit a good chance that the central parts of the two galaxies will miss, slightly, but will become close enough for their outer halos to become gravitationally entangled. Once that happens, the two galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to become one large elliptical galaxy -- over the next few billion years. Pictured here is a combination of images depicting the sky of a world (Earth?) in the distant future when the outer parts of each galaxy begin to collide. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire surrounding Local Group of Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic of research for years to come.