Life in optical

I love this incredible visualization of a simulation of two galaxies colliding, and the comparaison with fantastic images of galaxy mergers taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

If anything, it really shows that our simulations seem to be a really good imitation of nature!

Sit back, and enjoy the dynamics of the cosmos :)

I have a couple of questions about this gorgeous simulation: Surely the rings would appear only partially sometimes when partially obscured by the Earth’s shadow, right? What would it look like then? Would we sometimes see small slices of rings on both sides of the horizon and nothing in the middle? How about backlit rings?

A more deep question I have about this is: How would our understanding of the Universe have progressed from having rings? Would we have inferred from the rings that the Earth is round and travels around the sun earlier than we have from simply having a moon? Would astronomy be more present in people’s life than it is now? How different would the history of science be?

There are no answers to any of these questions but they reinforce my conviction that our understanding of the world around us (at any scale) is biased and limited by what we are familiar with. Therefore we should jump out of our comfort zones and discover more!