222 Galaxy Mergers and Active Galactic Nuclei
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain how galaxies grow by merging with other galaxies and by consuming smaller galaxies (for lunch)
- Describe the effects that supermassive black holes in the centers of most galaxies have on the fate of their host galaxies
One of the conclusions astronomers have reached from studying distant galaxies is that collisions and mergers of whole galaxies play a crucial role in determining how galaxies acquired the shapes and sizes we see today. Only a few of the nearby galaxies are currently involved in collisions, but detailed studies of those tell us what to look for when we seek evidence of mergers in very distant and very faint galaxies. These in turn give us important clues about the different evolutionary paths galaxies have taken over cosmic time. Let’s examine in more detail what happens when two galaxies collide.
Mergers and Cannibalism
Figure 1 of this chapter introduction shows a dynamic view of two galaxies that are colliding. The stars themselves in this pair of galaxies will not be affected much by this cataclysmic event. (See the box Why Galaxies Collide but Stars Rarely Do.) Since there is a lot of space between the stars, a direct collision between two stars is very unlikely. However, the orbits of many of the stars will be changed as the two galaxies move through each other, and the change in orbits can totally alter the appearance of the interacting galaxies. A gallery of interesting colliding galaxies is shown in Figure 1. Great rings, huge tendrils of stars and gas, and other complex structures can form in such cosmic collisions. Indeed, these strange shapes are the signposts that astronomers use to identify colliding galaxies.
Why Galaxies Collide but Stars Rarely Do
Throughout this book we have emphasized the large distances between objects in space. You might therefore have been surprised to hear about collisions between galaxies. Yet (except at the very cores of galaxies) we have not worried at all about stars inside a galaxy colliding with each other. Let’s see why there is a difference.
The reason is that stars are pitifully small compared to the distances between them. Let’s use our Sun as an example. The Sun is about 1.4 million kilometers wide, but is separated from the closest other star by about 4 light-years, or about 38 trillion kilometers. In other words, the Sun is 27 million of its own diameters from its nearest neighbor. If the Sun were a grapefruit in New York City, the nearest star would be another grapefruit in San Francisco. This is typical of stars that are not in the nuclear bulge of a galaxy or inside star clusters. Let’s contrast this with the separation of galaxies.
The visible disk of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter. We have three satellite galaxies that are just one or two Milky Way diameters away from us (and will probably someday collide with us). The closest