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What makes some galaxies spiral or barred spiral in shape?

If all the stars are orbiting a super-massive black hole at the centre, why are they only orbiting in roughly one plane? Granted that once they have momentum in that plane the centripetal force of gravity should tend to keep them in that plane, but after the big bang what force caused them to form in that shape?

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  • Asked by tpd1001
  • on 2011-01-25 19:26:55
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Categories: Our universe.

Tags: Galaxy, blackhole, bigbang.

 

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Jon-Richfield says:

Not asking much are you?

To put it vaguely, try to imagine the parent cloud of matter of roughly 1e12 solar masses, particles with no collective net angular momentum, but some of them in orbit round the common centre of mass. Sooner or later they all would exchange momenta and fall into the centre rather quickly, leaving a black hole.

Boooring...

Now, imagine a similar mass sloughed off from some violent and large process; we could imagine it to have a considerable net angular momentum; in other words, spinning. Relatively soon, only masses spinning in the dominant direction would survive, the rest would cancel out their momentum and fall into the centre. The rest would have all sorts of trajectories in the dominant sense, but not in the same plane.

But! Particles in the same  sense and same plane with matching orbits would seldom collide, and in colliding would not change their trajectories much. However, those with highly elliptical orbits would have a tendency to collide more frequently and their surviving fragments would tend to be those in circular or near-circular orbit.

But the circles need not be in the same plain need they?

Right. But those that meet in trajectories at an angle will also tend to collide and pretty soon (mere billions of years) not much would be left outsde the dominant plane and sense of spin.

Not that the model does not demand much other than that the original ball of condensation has a dominant sense of spin.

Was that what you had in mind?

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Tags: Galaxy, blackhole, bigbang.

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posted on 2011-01-25 20:42:08 | Report abuse


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