This is a time laspe video of footage shot by the International Space Station, as it orbits the Earth.
Amazing!
Galaxy Cluster in Cosmic Free-for-All (NASA, Chandra, 4/28/09) by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
This composite image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745 (MACSJ0717, for short) where four separate galaxy clusters have been involved in a collision, the first time such a phenomenon has been documented. Hot gas is shown in an image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and galaxies are shown in an optical image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The hot gas is color-coded to show temperature, where the coolest gas is reddish purple, the hottest gas is blue, and the temperatures in between are purple.
The repeated collisions in MACSJ0717 are caused by a 13-million-light- year-long stream of galaxies, gas, and dark matter – known as a filament — pouring into a region already full of matter. A collision between gas in two or more clusters causes the hot gas to slow down.
However, the galaxies, which are mainly empty space, do not slow down as much and so they move ahead of the gas. Therefore, the speed and direction of each cluster’s motion — perpendicular to the line of sight — can be estimated by studying the offset between the average position of the galaxies and the peak in the hot gas.
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/IfA/C. Ma et al. Optical: NASA/STScI/IfA/C. Ma et al.
just to further nourish my galaxy obsession today…
Colliding Galaxies.
This is truly incredible - the sharpest image available of the Anntenae galaxies, a pair of once isolated spiral galaxies, merging to create one galaxy.
As this takes place, billions of stars are created and are able to flourish, creating dense super star clusters.
Although they are colliding at about a million miles an hour, this is a process that will take many millions of years to complete.
Mindblowing, but what does this event, 45 to 65 million light years away from Earth, mean for us?
Most galaxies experience this type of collision at least once in their lifetime. This is the expected fate of our Milky Way, with it’s collision with the Andromeda galaxy.
Currently, from the Milky Way, it would take two million years, travelling at the speed of light, to reach Andromeda. So this foreseeable event will take at least 4 billion years to occur.
I highly recommend reading/youtubing more about galaxy collisions. This phenomena boggles the mind.
Michio Kaku - Artificial Intelligence
The ever inspiring Michio Kaku gives his two cents on Artificial Intelligence.
He explains that Moore’s Law governs the fate of the Silicon Revolution, and will ultimately lead to it’s demise in 20 or so years. The computing age, as we know it, will end!
This will be the catalyst for the rise of super powerful Quantum Computers, presently researched and developed today. It is still uncertain the extent of ‘intelligence’ we can harness from this technology, but who knows - perhaps A.I. and it’s ability to process as accurately and as fast as the human mind, could be more of a reality that we think!
Definitely give this a watch!
