[ExI] black biggies

Tue Sep 8 00:02:54 UTC 2020

From: SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] black biggies

>…Would that be strictly required though? 

>…Suppose there are two galaxies passing through each other— can’t that result in two black holes passing each other and falling into a death spiral?

>…(I’m not up to date on the particulars of this merger)

>…SR Ballard

Hi SR, ja it could happen that way, but the problem there is that galaxies are not really very closely packed.  Two galaxies can pass thru each other, stars get slung all over the place, but actual close encounters between any two stars is very rare.  Even then, if the stars came from different galaxies, tightly paired couples which stay in elliptical orbits would be exceedingly rare.  To then get another such pair coincidentally in a tight quartet, I can’t see it.  But we may eventually be reaching for those kinds of solutions, hard to say.

A good way to envision it: image you are in a really good rocket and you launch yourself at really high speed right at the center of a really dense really big galaxy with a 100 trillion stars, such as IC1101: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_1101#:~:text=IC%201101%20is%20a%20supergiant,of%20about%20100%20trillion%20stars.

If you do that, you will probably pass right through and never get very close to anything.  You would likely never get close enough to anything to even cause your path to wobble much.  Once you start doing the actual calculations, one risks the dreaded galaxy derangement syndrome: you can’t get your head around it, you just go crazy trying to grasp the scale of it all.  Why the hell is all that out there, just sitting there doing nothing useful?  Such a tragic waste!  Why can’t we somehow put it to work at making us money?  The mind boggles. 

Galaxies are big, but space is bigger.

spike

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