by iamlucky13 » Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:47 pm
orin stepanek wrote:I think it's a wonder that the gravitational influence of the Milky-Way isn't stretching the SMC & LMC apart and absorbing them; unless the time it takes for this to happen is immeasurable as it probably would take millions of years for this to evolve. I think there will be a lot of excitement when Andromeda and the Milky-Way get together.
Orin
Well, I suppose we can think of a simpler system as an analogy. The earth and moon are a small system orbiting the sun, but remain stable because perterbations thrown in by the sun are balanced when the moon moves to the opposite side of the earth.
Maybe we can think of the SMC and LMC as bigger, more complex versions of the earth moon system, with the sun being analogous to the Milky Way. The SMC and LMC should be relatively stable in their (gigantic) orbits around the Milky Way. Now if another galaxy were to wander into the picture gravitationally, that could throw things off and draw out the clusters into elongated shapes. Similarly, if Venus happened to wander close past the moon, wouldn't it's short term gravitational tug yank the moon into an extremely eccentric orbit, or even out of orbit completely?
And I suppose it probably does take millions of years for a galactic collision to happen. Remember these things are 10's of thousands of light years across, and they're moving relatively slowly.
[quote="orin stepanek"]I think it's a wonder that the gravitational influence of the Milky-Way isn't stretching the SMC & LMC apart and absorbing them; unless the time it takes for this to happen is immeasurable as it probably would take millions of years for this to evolve. I think there will be a lot of excitement when Andromeda and the Milky-Way get together.
Orin[/quote]
Well, I suppose we can think of a simpler system as an analogy. The earth and moon are a small system orbiting the sun, but remain stable because perterbations thrown in by the sun are balanced when the moon moves to the opposite side of the earth.
Maybe we can think of the SMC and LMC as bigger, more complex versions of the earth moon system, with the sun being analogous to the Milky Way. The SMC and LMC should be relatively stable in their (gigantic) orbits around the Milky Way. Now if another galaxy were to wander into the picture gravitationally, that could throw things off and draw out the clusters into elongated shapes. Similarly, if Venus happened to wander close past the moon, wouldn't it's short term gravitational tug yank the moon into an extremely eccentric orbit, or even out of orbit completely?
And I suppose it probably does take millions of years for a galactic collision to happen. Remember these things are 10's of thousands of light years across, and they're moving relatively slowly.