Three galaxies are tearing each other apart in stunning new Hubble telescope image [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By Brandon Specktor published about 23 hours ago

This twisty-turny collision is a preview of what awaits our galaxy.



Three galaxies collide in this stunning new Hubble image. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA)

Corkscrewing through the cosmos, three distant galaxies collide in a stunning new image captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

This cosmic crash is known as a triple galaxy merger, when three galaxies slowly draw each other nearer and tear each other apart with their competing gravitational forces. Mergers like these are common throughout the universe, and all large galaxies — including our own, the Milky Way — owe their size to violent mergers like this one.

As chaotic as they seem, mergers like these are more about creation than destruction. As gas from the three neighboring galaxies collides and condenses, a vast sea of material from which new stars will emerge is assembled at the center of the newly unified galaxy.

Existing stars, meanwhile, will survive the crash mostly unscathed; while the gravitational tug-of-war among the three galaxies will warp the orbital paths of many existing stars, so much space exists between those stars that relatively few of them are likely to collide, Live Science previously reported.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/triple-galaxy-merger-cancer?utm_source=notification