Elaine Meinel Supkis
New class of galaxies called 'Hobbit' galaxies are spotted by modern telescopic instruments. These now suddenly visible entities alert us to the fact that space is far from 'empty' but is filled with all the stuff started with the Big Bang. This is why space is NOT 'flying apart faster and faster' but is rather, still pulling together, heading towards the New Big Bang.
&hearts Much of what is in space is invisible because it doesn't shine enough or at all.
Scientists familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" have coined a name for a new class of ultra-faint galaxies in Earth's Local Group of galaxies: "hobbit."The Local Group is a collection of about 40 galaxies, dominated by the Milky Way and Andromeda. The rest are mostly small satellites known as "dwarf galaxies" that are gravitationally bound to these two galaxies. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two of the Milky Way's better known dwarf galaxies.
A recent sky survey revealed eight new members in our Local Group of galaxies, including the "hobbit" galaxies and what might be the smallest galaxy ever discovered.
"They seem to be much fainter than anyone suspected galaxies could be before," said study team member Daniel Zucker of Cambridge University. "So rather than dwarf galaxies, we should perhaps call them ‘hobbit galaxies.'"
What this means is space has lots of galaxies of many different sizes from the very, very small to the absolutely gigantic. Second, we can plainly see the bigger galaxies are attracting the smaller ones and the smaller ones attract even smaller ones and so on down the scale.
What is very interesting is how a large number of the dwarf and hobbit galaxies are actually conglamorations of very, very, very old stars. Sort of like our own sun, yellow. Billions of years old. And more important, they are all coming in to our galaxy like birds heading towards the huge oak tree in the middle of my lower pasture, to roost.
Everywhere we look now, we see them. As we scan the heavens and try to identify all the light information there, we see more and more of these guys, coming towards us, not flying away. They weren't wrenched from another galaxy, we, ourselves have not merged with any great galaxies yet, at least not since our own hobbit galaxy was pulled apart by the Milky Way about 1.5 billion years ago.
Right now, all these captive galaxies are dropping into our gravitational pool and will join us in the outer arms of this mid-sized galaxy. In turn, we are all dropping towards the bigger Andromeda galaxy that lies off in the sector of the Pegasus Square, to turns silently in the darkness out there, many similiar dwarf and hobbit galaxies are helplessly being drawn into it, too. Their faint yellow suns invisible to us but for them, if, and there is a 100% chance there are habitable planets in these safe, small galaxies!---rational life forms are gazing in wonder at the huge, churning maelstrom of stars in the skies above, so bright, the galaxy can be seen even during the day. If they have any astronomers, they can't see the little yellow star in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.
But if they plot the redshift and if they are clever and realize that everything in space travels in curves, they will realize their homeworld will fall into the grip of the Milky Way and I am certain they feel a bit of panic, wondering how this will effect them.
Life on our earth evolved in only 1 billion years. What if one of the companion yellow suns in our hobbit galaxy evolved life 3 billion years ago? Then they would have been the creatures who watched apprehensively as this quiet, peaceful group of old stars fell into the Milky Way and were torn from each other and exposed to vast explosions and disasters. Somehow, our own planet managed to survive. Occassionally, infalling material from that time passes by like we are seeing this week, zipping around the sun.
Seven of the new galaxies are gravitationally bound to the Milky Way, while the eighth appears to float freely in space.The new Local Group members are even smaller and fainter than other known dwarf galaxies, with luminosities ranging from only a thousand to at most a few hundred thousand times that of our sun.
The dimness could be the result of stellar age, as seven of the new galaxies contain mostly old stars. Of these seven, two are located in the constellation Canes Venatici, one in Bootes, one in Leo, one in Coma Berenices, one in Ursa Major and one in Hercules.
The eighth and most recently spotted galaxy is in many ways the most interesting. Titled Leo T, it is about 1.4 million light-years away from Earth, so far away that it floats freely in space, unperturbed by the Milky Way.
NOTHING 'floats freely' in space. NOTHING. Everyone is in the grip of the gravitational pull of something else and all things are being pulled by all bigger things without exception. A more distant galaxy may SEEM as if it were standing still vis a vis ourselves but this is an illusion: it is falling which is why it is in our neighborhood. After all, if the universe were expanding, it wouldn't be loitering on the edge of our gravitational pool, it would be flying merrily into nothingness.
Perhaps evolution can't work so well in the chaos of the inner galactic core but happens mostly on satellites around old yellow stars happily circling each other in these hobbit and dwarf galaxies? Perhaps on one of these possible planets (astronomically speaking, it is nearly inevitable that out of the thousands of these tiny galaxies, there are more then one that has technology as high as our own) researchers are frantic to develop intergalactic flight so they can do something before they are swallowed up by our galaxy?
Sp far from being 'unperturbed by the Milky Way,' perhaps they are right now in total panic? They clearly see the other galaxies that are preceeding them, falling into the grip of this huge, white-ringed with vast clouds of thick dirt that light can't pass through, the middle of this mess glowing malevolently with a brilliant egg-yolk yellow center? I am assuming the eggs have yellow yokes, the stars these aliens circle being a yellow sun and they, not insects seeing the infrared, but what if they are that?
They can plainly see via their multimirror-array eyes, the infrared of our galaxy and this shows where the violent astral activity is! Oh my!
There are armies of humans on this planet who ardently believe we are being visited by aliens who love to flash lights at us. Every time some unexplained light in the sky happens, people rush about, screaming about aliens.
I think the youth of these aliens who finally developed their worm-hole jumping space craft have spotted this wayward yellow star and are now playing with flashlights with us, just like we used to do when children, trying to fool fireflies. If these alien kids are like our own, they are probably hacking our systems in order to make us run around like crazy, killing each other.
Yeah, that's it. That explains what is going on today. See? Anyone suggesting astronomy is useless just has to have a little imagination!
When I was a child, I saw in all the movies and cartoons about aliens from space, the Astronomer and or Rocket Scientist called upon to rescue humans always had a pretty daughter that the Space Commander would fall in love with....as my father used to say, 'I pity any alien who tries to mess with you.' Ditto any space commander, of course.
But then, my father liked to think aliens would be friendly and interested in talking science. I knew this would be false, everyone is interested in sex and power. And eating. This could be a problem if the aliens took after Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Or Martha Stewart.
This is why we must watch there Hobbit and Dwarf galaxies. What if we spot other ones that would be called 'Orc' galaxies? Or 'Elf'?
Maybe that huge oak in my pasture is really an alien Ent? Grazing quietly, moving a few inches a year. I might wake up and find it front of the back door! Perhaps the many Chickadees living in that tree are really its eyes and ears? "Chickadee...dee...dee!" might be alien talk for "Take me to your leader...oh, forget it."?
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"Everywhere we look now, we see them."
It is critical to remember that the events we see with our telescopes happened a very long time ago. Light from the Andromeda galaxy takes 2.5 million years to reach us, and that galaxy is in the "neighborhood", so to speak. The further out you go, the further back you go. What's happening right now, in a galaxy a billion light-years from now? We won't know for another billion years.
There's an interesting article in SciAm this month - I'll send you a link when it goes online as the website is a month behind the print edition - which notes that the frequency of galactic collisions peaked between 6 and 8 billion years ago, and has been declining ever since.
Posted by: JSmith | January 22, 2007 at 01:40 PM
That will be interesting to see...only it does not explain the huge groupings of millions of galaxies, flowing towards something! Not at all.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | January 23, 2007 at 12:25 AM