Abstract
The conjecture about mergers that is cited above has been discussed in more detail by Chandrasekhar (1942) in his theory of dynamical friction. As Toomre (1977) points out: “It seems almost inconceivable that there wasn’t a great deal of merging of sizable bits and pieces (including quite a few lesser galaxies) early in the career of every major galaxy, no matter what it looks like now.” Observations by Zepf and Koo (1989) suggest that such interactions between galaxies may have been much more frequent in the past than they are now. If this view is correct then the galaxies we see today might bear little resemblance to the original population of primordial galaxies. It is noted in passing that most tidally distorted galaxies have nearby optical companions. It follows (van den Bergh 1969) that only a small fraction of all galaxies can consist entirely of dark matter.
If there were two earths in space, then they would both fall to the centre of the Universe and coalesce, because earth moves naturally to the centre.
Aristotle
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van den Bergh, S. (1990). Galaxy Mergers: Views of an Appointed Skeptic. In: Wielen, R. (eds) Dynamics and Interactions of Galaxies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75273-5_126
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75273-5_126
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