It is my opinion, arrived at after considerable thought since testing is out of the question, that there must be several collisions visible and in various states of completion that are being misinterpreted as other phenomena. When two stars collide, at onset of the collision, all motion is two directly opposite directions. Inertia would play a part in reversing the motion of some of the mass and ejecting it from the body, but mostly in the direction from whence it came.Chris Peterson wrote:While there's no particular reason to make that assumption, the reality is that stars colliding is a vanishingly rare event, so an observation would be scientifically valuable.therodly1 wrote:I suspect that this will turn out to be nothing but two stars that have collided.
By virtue of gravity's constancy, all the mass will be subject to motions as defined by the rules of gravity(after all, it is what brought the stars together). Since most of the mass is in the single star resulting from the collision, that star will control any escaping material.
Years down the road, the expanding cones from Eta Carina will become flute shaped because the material will be still being affected by the mass of the single star. The process has already started. In my opinion.