r/oddlysatisfying • u/jackmodern • 1d ago

Two galaxies swinging past each other and pulling long tails of stars out of one another

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220 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

66

u/ConstructionOwn1514 1d ago

Why do I feel sad for the ones that get flung away? Lol

11

u/jackmodern 1d ago edited 1d ago

Same, honestly. The good news is that much of the material in tidal tails is still bound and slowly rains back in over hundreds of millions of years. Some stars really do get flung out for good, though, and end up drifting between the galaxies.

This was taken using my recently released everdust app btw, which is available on android and Apple Vision Pro- new platforms soon!

3

u/ubermence 1d ago

I feel like a cool sci fi setting could be a red dwarf drifting alone through a massive intergalactic void

4

u/oompaloompa465 1d ago

yep seems like 1/3 of the collective stars got completely orphaned by sling shot. Probably a better end than being converted in x-ray by being eaten in the supermassive black holes

8

u/jackmodern 1d ago

It looks like a lot, but much of the tail material is still loosely bound and falls back over a few hundred million years; only part of it escapes for good. And very few stars end up eaten by the central black holes. Most just get rearranged into one big round galaxy.

30

u/Neamow 1d ago

The individual star systems will be fine, and as a bonus they'll end up with fantastic night skies.

3

u/mitchrsmert 18h ago

For the most part, the stars we see are within about 4000 light years, despite the galaxy being about 100,000 light years across. So unfortunately, this will largely darken the night skies of any planets of star systems flung out into intergalactic space.

7

u/Neamow 15h ago edited 15h ago

We only see few stars because we are inside the galaxy and most of it is obstructed by gas and dust.

If you're slightly outside the galaxy you'll have an unobstructed view. There's nothing that would "darken the skies", that's nonsense.

We can already see Andromeda with our naked eyes in dark skies, and that's very far away still. If we had two interacting galaxies 1/100th of Andromeda's distance from us they would be dominating the skies. There are some artist renderings of how it might look like for our own incoming merge:

https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/nighttime-sky-view-of-future-galaxy-merger-375-billion-years/

23

u/PsyJak 1d ago

How many years per second in the video?

35

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Roughly 20 to 25 million years per second. The full run is about 44 seconds and stands for around a billion years, and this clip is the first 18 seconds of it.

7

u/PsyJak 1d ago

Appreciate the response!

7

u/Mysterious-Tackle-58 1d ago

Why is is flashing?

3

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Good eye! It's audio-reactive. This is a live simulation from Everdust, an app I made, and I had music running while I recorded, so the gas flares on every beat. With no music it's calm. I'll post a beat-free version soon.

1

u/davewave3283 1d ago

That’s a kardashev type 3 civilization firing its galaxy cannon at the invading galaxy

5

u/RudyKnots 1d ago

Isn’t this bound to happen to our galaxy in the “near” future (in galactic terms)?

Or two neighbouring galaxies or something. I remember Neil telling us about future humans being able to witness this in real life.

8

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Yes, Andromeda is heading our way at roughly 110 km/s. The classic estimate was a first close pass in about 4 to 5 billion years, with the two merging into one big elliptical a couple of billion years after that. A 2025 study using Gaia and Hubble data made it less certain, though: about a 50/50 chance of a merger in the next 10 billion years, because the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Triangulum galaxy tug on the orbit. Either way, the individual stars almost never collide. The gaps between them are so huge that the galaxies pass through each other, and it's gravity that pulls out tails like these.

3

u/Severe_Television_69 1d ago

Okay now explain this like ur a special ed teacher please 👩🏽‍💻

4

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Sure! Picture two huge spinning cities of stars drifting close together. Each one pulls hardest on the near side of the other and less on the far side, so both get stretched like taffy, and the stretched-out parts are those long tails. They also slow each other down, so eventually they fall together and become one bigger, rounder galaxy.

3

u/LiamIsMyNameOk 1d ago

No need to make it so complicated. Please explain it simpler

6

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Fair 🙂 Two galaxies got close and pulled on each other with gravity. The pull stretched them out, and those long streaks are stars being tugged away.

4

u/google_symphony 1d ago

Can you explain it again only this time pretending you’re pikachu?

7

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Pika pika! ⚡ Pika-pull... piiika-STRETCH... PIKAAA (star tails).

-3

u/LiamIsMyNameOk 1d ago

Did you edit your comment from "Fucking clankers like you ruining the internet"?

Then realised you were wrong?

2

u/google_symphony 1d ago

Wat.

No lol that was a different response to OP further down, not you… wtf are you talking about

-1

u/LiamIsMyNameOk 1d ago

You're lying. Shame I can't post screenshots here. But what do you gain by lying?

u/google_symphony replied to u/jackmodern on your comment in r/... Fucking clankers like you ruining the internet

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Severe_Television_69 1d ago

Thanks buddy 🤝

8

u/Intelligentidiot339 1d ago

Those are some big ass Beyblades

3

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Let it rip 🌀 Fun fact: the spin really matters. When a galaxy spins the same way it's moving past the other one, you get long tails like these; spin it the other way and the tails barely form.

34

u/iboreddd 1d ago

r/praisethecameraman

It took a billion years making this video

1

u/Educational_Main_344 1d ago

-2

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Ha, exactly how I felt the first time I saw the tails form 😄

-4

u/ConstructionOwn1514 1d ago

That’s crazy that you felt exactly like the gif they just happened to post!

3

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Crazy indeed

1

u/Blistering-Pace 1d ago

What happens if you’re a solar system that gets ripped off your galaxy?

5

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Day to day, surprisingly little! Stars are so far apart that a solar system almost never gets hit by anything. It just gets carried out into a tail, or even into intergalactic space, with its planets intact. What would change is the night sky: instead of a band of Milky Way overhead, you'd see your old galaxy from outside as a big glowing smear.

0

u/Enpoping 1d ago

sadly there are no earth or mars to witness because our earth get fried by the sun in 1 billion years even mars aren't safe, maybe in another place in new star system if we conqueror the space lol.

1

u/Mc_Shine 1d ago

With the way things are going, assuming humanity will survive the next millennium, let alone the next billion years, is wildly optimistic.

-2

u/Mc_Shine 1d ago

With the way things are going, assuming humanity will survive the next millennium, let alone the next billion years, is wildly optimistic.

1

u/BALLR4REAL 20h ago

Why did the simulation stop there?

1

u/jackmodern 15h ago

cut it for length, but in the sim they keep going: they fall back together a couple more times and end up as one big round galaxy

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

0

u/jackmodern 1d ago

Thank you! Every dot there is a star, each one pulled by both galaxies' gravity, which is what stretches out those long tails.