The Ongoing Milky Way/Sagittarius A Merger.

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The Ongoing Milky Way/Sagittarius A Merger.

Postby PatrickPowers » Mon Feb 01, 2021 1:01 pm

The Ongoing Milky Way/Sagittarius A Merger.

Recent mapping of our galaxy discovered the galactic center is greatly tilted with respect to the rest of it. Only a galactic merger could have the power to cause such a thing. Sure enough, the dance partner has been identified. It’s the Sagittarius A dwarf galaxy. I say we are showing galactic bias. It seems to me that Sag A is a normal galaxy while the Milky Way is a giant. “Dwarf” indeed! Even a dwarf galaxy is plenty big. Sag A enjoyed its first intercourse with the Milky Way 6 billion years ago, making a wave in the disc. It then circled around and did it again from the other side. This was followed by two more sessions, the fourth ongoing today on the opposite side of the galaxy. Sag A is hard to see, so much so that it was discovered on the late date of 1995. Well, if it is so faint why was it able to pack such a heavyweight punch as to bend our galaxy like that? The answer is that Sag A was bright enough when it first merged with the Milky Way. Since then it has been “spaghettified,” stretched out by the Milky Way’s stronger gravity. It now covers such a large arc in the sky that the average brightness is low.

By chance Sag A has an orbit that is perpendicular to the Milky Way. This makes for a bigger wave than does an oblique encounter. Its passages also may have have had the timing to reinforce each other rather than cancel out. The end result is the Milky Way having one of the biggest waves in the known Universe. It circles the galaxy more slowly than do the stars. Definitely not a “bulge” or a “warp,” perhaps a combination of a wave and a vibration like a drum head.

When two galaxies merge their gasses add together, triggering the formation of stars. Our Sun may have been a child of the first encounter.
PatrickPowers
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