back to article Universe slipped Milky Way a sausage galaxy to grow a big belly bulge

Around eight to ten billion years ago, a neighbouring dwarf galaxy known as the Sausage galaxy smashed into the Milky Way leaving a smattering of gas, dust, and stars. A team of astrophysicists have traced back the leftover debris to piece together the cosmic catastrophe detailed in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of …

  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Alien

    Two thousand million or so years ago...

    two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other. A couple of hundreds of millions of years either way do not matter, since at least that much time was required for the inter-passage. At about that same time - within the same plus-or-minus ten percent margin of error, it is believed - practically all of the suns of both those galaxies became possessed of planets.

    Doc Smith, Triplanetary

    Be afraid. Be very afraid...

    1. stephanh

      Re: Two thousand million or so years ago...

      I think that was based on the now-outdated idea that planet formation was caused by two stars passing close by.

      The same concept is also present in Stapledon's "Star Maker".

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    being slipped a weiner and getting a fat belly

    well tracing things back and finding a sausage sounds like people forgot to clean up well after last Christmases party.

    Boffins said we had accreted much, been a hungry galaxy

    but more recently other boffins said they had found much hydrogen accumulating at the edge of our galaxy and had modeled the formation of the dwarf galaxies at its edge with accuracy.

    It will be interesting to see what wins out sausage versus computer model

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: being slipped a weiner and getting a fat belly

      Would that make it just gas then not the product of union with the weiner ?

    2. Mpeler
      Paris Hilton

      Re: being slipped a weiner and getting a fat belly

      Joyless tubes, full of gristle, accompanied by yellow matter with gas in it...

      (apologies to Douglas Adams)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Priceless, naming a sausage galaxy after the mother of Uranus. They certainly slipped that one in.

  4. Christoph

    But was it

    inna bun?

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: But was it

      Tell you what, I'll throw in some extra globular clusters for free, and that's cuttin' me own throat!

  5. Cuddles

    Artist's impression

    It would be difficult for that picture to look much less like a sausage.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Artist's impression

      Had me thinking that too, then I considered that maybe they meant a Cumberland sausage?

  6. onefang

    That explains where the space grease came from -

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-28/milky-way-galaxy-contains-space-grease/9921076

    I sent a tip to EL Reg about that story a week ago, but there's only been two science stories since then. Is the science editor on holiday? Maybe we should help them out, and come up with the headline? I'll start with the obvious one -

    GREEEAAASE in SPAAAACE!

    Deep fried Milky Way.

    1. Grikath
      Unhappy

      Is the science editor on holiday?

      He's been ... consumed... by the AI team.

      Maybe we'll get him back when they're done excreting blockchains.

  7. arctic_haze

    Origin story

    Our sun did not even exist when the Sausage entered the Milky Way.

    I wonder if our very existence is due to the disturbance caused by a sausage?

    1. Oblamo BinLyen

      Re: Origin story

      It's all because of Glowbull Climate Change.

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