Galaxies clash in four-way merger
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6933566.stm
Four gigantic galaxies have been seen crashing into one another in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever seen.
A US team of astronomers observed the four-way cosmic smash-up using Nasa's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes along with ground-based observatories.
The clashing galaxies are expected to eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.
Details of the research appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The rare observation offers an unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies in the Universe are formed.
When this merger finishes, the giant galaxy left at the end will be one of the biggest ones in the Universe
Kenneth Rines, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Collisions, or mergers, between galaxies are common in the Universe. Mergers between one large galaxy and several small ones, called "minor mergers", have been well documented.
Astronomers have also observed "major" mergers among pairs of galaxies that are similar in size. But, until now, no major mergers between multiple large galaxies have been seen.
"It's the first one that I know about. So far, nobody has written to me to say they've found another four-way merger," said co-author Kenneth Rines, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, US.
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