What's the opposite of a spiral galaxy?! #shorts

By Dr. Becky

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On the other end of the spectrum from settled ordered spiral galaxies, are elliptical galaxies. These are some of the most massive galaxies in the entire Universe, and they are just giant blobs of stars. No flat disc shape, no spiral structure, just a sphere of stars. They’re rarer than spiral galaxies, and crucially these aren’t spinning, or at least they’re not spinning very much. The stars are still orbiting around the centre of the galaxy, but in all different planes and directions. It’s like a swarm of bees in there. There’s no order to it, and the galaxy as a whole is no longer spinning. And we think that’s due to repeated galaxy mergers over billions of years. The effects of a single galaxy merger can take over a billion years to be fully seen in simulations, to slowly strip that spin away and scramble everything up to give you that blob shape. #astrophysics Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Mar