Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way

Tue Nov 24, 2009 11:13 am » by **Nickelson**

The Milky Way's neighbourhood may be teeming with invisible galaxies, one of which appears to be crashing into our own.

In 2008, a cloud of hydrogen with a mass then estimated at about 1 million suns was found to be colliding with our galaxy (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... alaxy.html). Now it appears the object is massive enough to be a galaxy itself.

Called Smith's cloud, it has managed to avoid disintegrating during its smash-up with our own, much bigger galaxy. What's more, its trajectory suggests it punched through the disc of our galaxy once before, about 70 million years ago.

To have survived, it must contain much more matter than previously thought, in order to provide enough gravity to hold it together. Calculations by Matthew Nichols and Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the University of Sydney, Australia, indicate that it has about 100 times the previously estimated mass (http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.0684)

Many more such dark galaxies may be out there (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... omers.html), says Leo Blitz of the University of California, Berkeley. Simulations of galaxy formation suggest a galaxy the size of the Milky Way should feature about 1000 dwarf galaxies (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... axies.html), but only a few dozen have been found so far. Some of the missing dwarfs may be dark galaxies that are all but invisible, he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nline-news

:nails:

Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:14 pm » by **Nickelson**

Called Smith's cloud, it has managed to avoid disintegrating during its smash-up with our own, much bigger galaxy. What's more, its trajectory suggests it punched through the disc of our galaxy once before, about 70 million years ago.

70 million years ago, does that rings a bell to anyone? :headscratch:

What happened on Earth back than, does anyone has any scientific facts? :think:

Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:59 pm » by **Nickelson**

70 million years ago, does that rings a bell to anyone? What happened on Earth back than, does anyone has any scientific facts?

65 - 70 million years ago a disaster happened, although we are not sure of the cause. :idea:

All the dinosaurs and many other groups of animals and plants became extinct around this time. The most popular theory is that a mountain-sized meteorite hit the Earth, throwing up a thick cloud of dust and causing tidal waves and global forest fires. The dust hid the Sun. This might have killed many plants, which need light to live. It might also have cooled the Earth and so killed the dinosaurs which, being unable to keep themselves warm, might have stopped moving and so starved.

Tue Nov 24, 2009 2:48 pm » by **Nickelson**

The Milky Way's neighbourhood may be teeming with invisible galaxies, one of which appears to be crashing into our own.

Am I the only one who's shocked by this news?

70 million years ago this invisible galaxy also crashed into our Milky Way, Dinosaurs died by a meteorite strike, apparently.

I was wondering which scientific events happened throughout our galaxy in that time? I try to get some answers here, because I AM :nails:

Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:06 pm » by **Nickelson**

Post Slush :flop:

prophetic-signs-that-we-are-in-the-end-times-t12165.html

Do I see a resemblance in these two posts :think:

End of time as predicted in prophecy’s as mentioned in the Post of Slush and the crashing of our Milky Way as posted here, which IS a scientific fact and also happened 70 million years ago?

Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:57 am » by **Sceptilief**

Good post, nickelson. Must of missed it before.

There is a great deal of evidence and findings to suggest that we will arrive at a survival point on this planet, where our very existence will be tested beyond anything we've known in our truncated fictional history. It would be naive to believe that we're not faced with this very possibility in our near future. The acceptance of this by the majority of humans would surely change many things. Such as diverting war funding to tracking these prophesied events.

However, since NASA has the final word, we should NEVER worry about a mass-extinction event, and there's never been a situation in which the life of the planet has been at stake. Anything that even suggests so, is a hoax. Everything will always be just fine for our greedy species!