I was reading a article about how the sun may turn into a red giant when it gets hit with the wave coming from the center of the milky way. I tried to find it and for some reason all my internet history from that day has 'disappeared' yet the other days around it are intact......Weird. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 9833586
Here's a link I'm researching that discuses this:
[link to www.paneandov.com
Scroll down the page to read the document. Basically it hypothisizes that a burst of energy from the Milky Way's Nuclear Core (which contains black holes) emitted a burst of energy that contains EXTREMELY powerful Gamma rays due to hit us this year.
Maybe, maybe not.
Analyzing the velocities of stars in their study, the team was able to confirm that the Milky Way’s central bulge does contain a massive bar, with one end nearly pointed right at our solar system
. One other discovery made by the team is that while our galaxy rotates like a wheel, the BRAVA study found that the rotation of the central bar is more like that of a roll of paper towels in a dispenser. The team’s discoveries provide vital clues to help explain the formation of the Milky Way’s central region.
December 20, 2011
[link to www.universetoday.com
As part of a larger study dubbed BRAVA, for Bulge Radial Velocity Assay, a team assembled by Dr. R. Michael Rich at UCLA, measured the velocity of a large sample of old, red stars towards the galactic center. (See image) They did this by observing the spectra of these stars, called M giants, which allows the velocity of the star along our line of sight to be determined. Over a period of 4 years almost 10,000 spectra were acquired with the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope, located in the Chilean Atacama desert, resulting in the largest homogeneous sample of radial velocities with which to study the core of the Milky Way. Analyzing the stellar motions confirms that the bulge in the center of our galaxy appears to consist of a massive bar, with one end pointed almost in the direction of the sun, which is rotating like a solid object
. Although our galaxy rotates much like a pinwheel, with the stars in the arms of the galaxy orbiting the center, the BRAVA study found that the rotation of the inner bar is cylindrical, like a toilet roll holder. This result is a large step forward in explaining the formation of the complicated central region of the Milky Way.
The full set of 10,000 spectra were compared with a computer simulation of how the bar formed from a pre-existing disk of stars. Dr. Juntai Shen of the Shanghai Observatory developed the model. The data fits the model extremely well, and suggests that before our bar existed, there was a massive disk of stars. This is in contrast to the standard picture in which our galaxy’s central region formed from the chaotic merger of gas clouds, very early in the history of the Universe. The implication is that gas played a role, but appears to have largely organized into a massive rotating disk, that then turned into a bar due to the gravitational interactions of the stars.
[link to www.noao.edu
[link to arxiv.org
Full paper PDF
[link to arxiv.org