galaxy on fire

[miriam_e]

This is weird.

Why would a galaxy be blowing smelly, tarry smoke out into space? The red features are false color infrared images of smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, like in car exhaust or barbeques, and they extend out into space to about 20,000 light years from the white disk of the galaxy. The picture was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope of galaxy Messier 82 about 12 million light years away. The smoke seems to be coming from all over the galaxy, not just the massive stars at the center. If it was coming from just the center you'd think it would form two cones with their apexes at the source.

I don't know how fast the smoke is moving, but even if it is moving incredibly fast, like about the speed of high explosive, then it has been moving for almost a billion years. (Detonating cord explodes at 14,318mph or 22,900kph... I hope I got my maths right.)

The press release:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-09/release.shtml
pictures:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-09/ssc2006-09a.shtml
videos:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-09/ssc2006-09v1.shtml

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Heheheheh :D
And here was I thinking that it was simply evidence of vast numbers of cigarette smokers in M82.

Yes, I've confirmed that USA has given Australia to the Vogons as payment for the Halliburton error. The good news is that bureaucracies have a logarithmic effect when added to each other, and the combined bureaucracies of USA plus the Vogons plus Australia mean that they won't take posession of this country for billions of years, around the same time our sun turns red giant. Whew! That was a close one. On the upside it means we got all that destruction urban renewal effectively for free. Now all we have to worry about is the several billion outraged races of warlike antlike beings who will shortly decend upon Earth and the Vogon homeworld for destroying liberating their galaxy. Lucky for New Zealand that the Vogons will be dumping their tailings and waste there. That is the only thing that those ant-beings are deterred by, meaning that NZ, although it will glow at night now, will be the only place on Earth that won't have 2 meter ants wandering around dismembering the locals. So you could say that Trent Lott and his (still-unfinished) front porch have saved New Zealand. A good outcome, as I'm sure all the newspapers will trumpet.