Ned, Thanks for the link!
quote:
My understanding gleaned from that is we are just sorting out the mechanisms behind galaxy formation. It is still undergoing a lot of research and new data.
That's what I've found too. The most I've gotten is like this one:
quote:
According to our current scientific understanding, at least most galaxies have formed during a comparatively short period, at about the same time, within the first billion years after the universe started to expand, from an initial hot state. Thus they are all almost as old as the universe itself, currently thought to be about 10-15 billion years. It is thought that galaxy formation started when primordial clouds of gaseous matter (hydrogene and helium), the proto-galaxies, were singled out and started to collapse by their own gravity. According to computer simulations, the variety of galaxy forms results from different initial parameters of the proto-galaxies such as the amount of (initial) angular momentum, as well as their later evolution in their environments, such as interaction with other neighboring galaxies.
Which is really just a starting point, but does sound like what we see in the Hubble Deep Field pictures...
Here's the link for the above quote if you want it:
No webpage found at provided URL: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/galaxy.html
It has some more links at the bottom which I haven't gotten to yet.
I'm interested in this because it seems like there's a real gap of concordance between theoretical physics [Big Bang] and observational physics [astronomy]. I think it's correct in a macro sense, but until we work out the details it's hard to refute a counterpointing argument.
wr/Geno
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