The existence is a unearthly place . We ’ve got planets thatrain diamonds , star that rotate super - rapidly , and freakish flashes ofradio wavesthat we ca n’t explicate .
For me , though , there ’s a rum type of beetleweed that really piques my pursuit . It ’s known as a “ cigar beetleweed ” , although its technical name is a prolate rotator . Like a spindle , these galaxy are shaped like a cigar and rotate along their longest axis of rotation . Yeah , they’reawesome .
Thing is , we thought they were passing rare . Like , we had only found 12 of them in the universe of discourse . But a Modern study , looking at just 600 extragalactic nebula , has chance eight more . This suggests they might not be that rare after all – and we ’ve also catch a handle on how they might mould . lease ’s dive in !
A study describing these findings was issue in the journalAstronomy and Astrophysicsand led by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany .
“ Until now uranologist cogitate that this type of galaxy is highly rare , ” Athanasia Tsatsi , the study ’s lead author , told IFLScience . “ It was really surprising to see so many galaxy with such a characteristic , much ten times more than expected ! ”
The coolest affair about this cogitation , though , is that the researchers think they ’ve lick out how cigar galaxies form . It would go something like this : First , two spiral beetleweed would collide with each other . One would then form a “ saloon ” , finally creating an elliptical galaxy with a cigar shape . The star of the other extragalactic nebula , meanwhile , orbit the ginmill of this galaxy . Thus , we get this swell spindle configuration .
It ’s likely that this process is fairly unusual , but not that rare . There might be many more cigar Galax urceolata out there waiting for us to discover , and that ’s fine by me .
“ Our determination hint that prolate rotation in massive ETGs [ other - type Galax urceolata ] might be more common than antecedently wait , and can serve toward a good understanding of their dynamic structure and organisation origin , ” the team noted in their paper .
“ This work , combined with hereafter , higher quality observations of the sample of galaxies present and orbit - based dynamical modeling , will give better insights into the dynamic nature of this peculiar case of rotators . ”
