Friday, February 5, 2010

Spiral galaxies 6 billion years ago

Spiral galaxies were "ugly ducklings" 6 bn yrs ago: Astronomers
(Brahmand.com, Feb 05, 2010)
Image created from data provided by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey demonstrates that the Hubble sequence six billion years ago was very different from the one that astronomers see today (Hubble).

WASHINGTON (PTI) - The beautiful spiral galaxies of modern universe were ugly ducklings six billion years ago, European astronomers have claimed. Using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the team led by Francois Hammer of the Observatoire de Paris has created a census of galaxy types and shapes from a time before the Earth and the sun existed, up to the present day. After sampling 116 local galaxies and 148 distant galaxies, they found that contrary to contemporary thought, more than half of the present-day spiral galaxies had peculiar shapes as recently as six billion years ago. More>>
  • It is interesting to note that Indian thought believes the "universe," or at least a single "world system" within what we in the West regard as a universe [multiverse], has a very particular shape. Jain cosmology describes it in literal terms that do not change.

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