Hubble Space Telescope image of the glittering spiral galaxy NGC 4651. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Leonard
This remarkable spiral galaxy, known as NGC 4651, may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space, but don’t be fooled — it keeps a violent secret. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the large and beautiful spiral that we observe today.
Although only a telescope like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captured this image, could give us a picture this clear, NGC 4651 can also be observed with an amateur telescope — so if you have a telescope at home and a star-gazing eye, look out for this glittering carnivorous spiral.
How big is the Universe? A question I am sure that you get asked frequently. But a justifiable one nevertheless, and the answer you give is probably the standard one, “No one actually knows?” And fair enough I suppose! And Astronomical Science as a whole cannot in fact answer that simplest of questions satisfactorily. But what it does say is, that the Galaxies are rushing away from each other, and technically that is true, but in fact they are rushing away from its centre, and I believe that to be for a reason, the place where everything allegedly started. But has it always been the case? Space is expanding naturally, and over approximately thirteen and a half billion years that has been the case and will continue to be, and as those Galaxies formed and developed over that time, they were caught up in that expansion, just like leaves on a pond are when a stone has been thrown into it. So that expansion is natural obviously. But here is my question, why? Why is it not only naturally expanding as would be expected, but apparently it is inexplicably speeding up, could it in fact be, that something other than the conventional theories of ‘Dark Energy’ empowered Gravity, is causing it, or could it be, that ‘The Big Bang’ as it is colloquially called, is still in fact ‘banging’? In other words, could whatever it was that generated the Universe originally, still be ‘pumping’ fresh energy out only to be converted into fresh matter E=mc squared and all that, no matter how slowly in Astronomical terms that is of course, out into the Universe causing a speeding up of that initial expansion, resulting in the appearance and in actuality the separating of Galaxies as a result as that expansion progresses, just like spots on an expanding balloon? So if that is indeed the case, another one of their ‘theories’ cannot be right, that eventually everything will just fade into nothingness, and space will just be one big empty expanse. But if there is a continual stream of fresh energy entering the Universe at its point of creation, just like a slowly bubbling fountain, meaning that there will never be a ‘drying up’ of existing matter, but rather there is a continual creation of new Stars, Galaxies and everything in between, then instead of it disappearing, the Universe will continue on ad infinitum, because I believe that you cannot contain, limit, nor stop Creation once started, let alone end it, and anyway, why would you want to!?