Colliding Galaxies

Picture this after a heavy night out ... wandering galaxies, star-spangled fireworks and deep black holes. On the other hand, just have another beer.

In some recently released Hubble Space Telescope images, colliding galaxies resemble a cosmic toothbrush, an owl in flight, a grasshopper and a butterfly. Check them out on www.youtube.com under, “Hubble captures colliding galaxies.”

But it’s true, galaxies wander. Through the universe that is. And when they crash into contact with each other they merge and rip each other apart. There’s a violent embrace and like a sci-fi animation movie they perform fantastic other-worldly displays that create bizarre looking shapes and form tidal tails when viewed from earth.



ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
NGC 6240 is a peculiar, butterfly- or lobster-shaped galaxy consisting of two smaller merging galaxies. It lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder, some 400 million light-years away. Observations with NASA s Chandra X-ray Observatory have disclosed two giant black holes, about 3,000 light-years apart, which will drift toward one another and eventually merge together into a larger black hole. The merging process, which began about 30 million years ago, triggered dramatic star formation and sparked numerous supernova explosions. The merger will be complete in some tens to hundreds of millions of years.
Credit: This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.
Object Names: NGC 6240, VV 617
Image Type: Astronomical
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
www.hubblesite.org – newscenter


“The violent activity triggers huge bursts of star formation that can churn out new stars 100 times faster than in an undisturbed galaxy like our own Milky Way. This accelerated star birth is followed a few million years later by cosmic fireworks as the heavier, faster-burning stars run out of fuel and explode as supernovae. Eventually, the colliding galaxies merge to form a new, more massive galaxy”, explains David Shiga writing for New Scientist.

Scientists believe that these events offer a preview of our own galaxy’s destiny some 5 billion years from now, when it merges with our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy.

With all that cosmic turmoil happening out there in space, it makes you wonder why on earth we get so stressed about daily life on earth, doesn’t it?

Source: http://space.newscientist.com, http://hubblesite.org, Wikipedia

Mini-me music files

Compressed music files - 1,000 times smaller than MP3 - can this be possible? Yip, it is. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a normal MP3 file. Whew, that’s a lot of extra storage on your iPod.

Source: www.rochester.edu

Giving electronics the finger

Boffins at Microsoft have been working on a high-tech armband that will let you interact with their electronic devices through a flick of the finger. The purpose is to make it even easier to work gadgets or computers, for instance, to answer the phone with just a twitch of a finger when you’re driving the car. In time, the researchers say, the armband might look like a watch or a bracelet. Arm-azing bling.

It’s called a muscle-computer interface or MUCI – not to be confused with mucus. It can be worn on the forearm and recognizes movements by monitoring muscle activity, and will be able to recognise which finger movements you’re making by decoding the voltage produced by muscle twitches.

And researchers at the University of Glasgow in the UK are taking it one step further. Soon you could be controlling your gadgets and MP3 players, for example, with just a foot tap, a change of walking pace, or a mere shrug of the shoulders!

So practice fidgeting. Your future might depend on it.

Sources: Paul Marks, New Scientist, 24 April 2008, Microsoft Research MUCI.