Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/24/wait-fossil-galaxies-are-a-thing.html
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What I find most interesting, here, is the implication that galaxies don’t move, and are static, with stars not orbiting the galactic core. For the structure of a “fossil galaxy” to currently exist within the Milky Way, there would have to have been zero orbital, or gravitational movement over all, for the stars within the Milky Way galaxy as a whole. Otherwise the structure of the “fossil galaxy” would have disintegrated. i.e. The Milky Way galaxy could not have rotated at all for the last ten billion years.
And this would mean that gravity does not act at all the way we think it does. Interesting.
So that’s where all those watches went.
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I wonder how having a fossil galaxy at the core changes the distribution of elements in our galaxy. I mean it’s going to be mostly hygrogen and some helium, but ISTM that might up the percentage of the other elements that are…more interesting.
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a fossil galaxy has been discovered in the center of the Milky Way.
Tch! Really!
Can’t you see that obviously God put it there last week (or may be around 6,000 years ago when he was putting dinosaur fossils on Earth). /s
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Quick, let’s excavate it and burn it for fuel!
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Maybe read the article? Far from static, the stars of the fossil galaxy were identified in part by how they moved differently.
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To paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli, your comment isn’t right, it’s not even wrong.
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Probably not much, as the stars are largely low-mass, and thus will result in planetary nebulae that won’t contribute much to the metallicity gradient. For that you need the mixing that only a supernova can bring to the table.
It is probably true, though, that the stars are distinguished from Milky Way stars not only dynamically but in their metallicities.
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Ah! So that’s what that video was that disappeared just as I was about to play it.
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Yeah, I forgot I was trying to do an upload, instead of a previously copied link.
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I hope they exchanged insurance information.
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At least it stuck around… I hate those hit and run galaxies!
And God put us in a cannibal galaxy, so cannibalism is the way to honor Him ! /s
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While waiting on the tow trucks?
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