Do Galaxies Really Collide?

When we think about colliding galaxies, we think of two large bodies hitting each other, large explosions, and destruction. Really that is a huge misconception. Galaxy collisions are referred to as mergers. The space between stars in a galaxy compared to the size of the galaxy. The following information can get a bit confusing so I will explain it in a simpler manner afterwards. Josh Barker of the National Space Center in the UK, states that a particle in air is 500 times its own width from another particle. Taking this information into account, our Sun is 29 million times its own width from the next star closest star. So if two galaxies were to meet and come in contact with each other they would seemingly pass through each other with no problem at all and there would be little to no collisions. Think of it this way, you have a lone tree standing in the center of a field and you are, say, 500 yards away from it and you throw hundreds of tennis balls toward the tree. It would be very difficult to hit the tree. That is how I looked at the collisions of two galaxies. Is the tree analogy inaccurate? Maybe, but it puts things into perspective. Enough about collisions, why do scientists refer to galaxy collisions as mergers? They are referred to as mergers because while galaxies are passing through one another, the black holes in the center of the two galaxies merge together to make a super massive black hole and one galaxy. As the galaxies pull toward each other the force destroys features like spirals or arms that the galaxies had before will be gone and the new galaxy in its place would be globular in shape.  Smaller events may happen while galaxies are merging because the space between objects in a galaxy are not empty, it is filled with gas and dust particles. When a galaxy mergers with another the forces creates friction and heat which can result in the formation of new stars. Some scientists’ thing that if the Milky Way was to collide with the Andromeda galaxy, we would survive the collision and other scientists say that the friction and force exerted from one galaxy could warp the morphology of life forms in the other galaxy. That will not happen for another 4 billion years though. Galaxy mergers happen more often in super clusters. A super cluster is just a bunch of galaxies mashed together in an area. This is how scientists observe, study, and collect data on how these galaxy mergers happen.

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