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By KURT LOFT
The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA The Hubble Space Telescope just revealed our ultimate fate through a dramatic series of images capturing the collision of massive galaxies.
Launched 18 years ago this week, the orbiting observatory trained its powerful eye on about 60 examples of merging spiral galaxies similar to the Milky Way. The images are important because they offer clues about the “seeds” from which everything flowers, said Lars Lindberg Christensen, a scientist with the European Space Agency in Garching, Germany.
“As the galaxies interact, the large reservoir of gas in their discs is compressed into stars,” he wrote in an e-mail.
The images, however, reveal something more: What will happen in our own backyard when the Milky Way and neighboring Andromeda galaxies get too cozy. Because of their proximity — a mere 2.5 million light years — the two galaxies are considered “twins.”
“The ultimate fate of our corner of the universe is one big merger,” said Ray Villard, a spokesman with the Hubble Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “It will happen when the sun burns out, in about 6 billion years.”
Astronomers in the past have only been able to observe one out of a possible million galaxies in the state of collision. The new cosmic atlas suggests that merging galaxies are common, even though they appear to defy logic.
For example, if the universe is isotropic — expanding in all directions — why are some galaxies coming together and not moving apart?
“The universe is expanding and accelerating, but locally, gravity still rules,” Villard said. “Planets still orbit the sun, and a galaxy can feel the pull of a nearby galaxy. They can still collide like bumper cars.”
The images help bolster public interest in Hubble just months before an effort to repair the aging, $2 billion observatory. In August, a space shuttle crew will fly into orbit to make the fourth and final servicing mission on Hubble, extending its life for at least another five years.
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