[first]
[prev]
[Carl Gibson, (UCSD) 13]
[NEXT]
[last]
The giant elliptical galaxy M87 (also called Virgo A) is at the center of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, at a distance 4.5x10^23 m (15 Mpc). It contains 10,000 luminous globular clusters of stars, compared to only 200 in the Milky Way, possibly because more of its dark globular clusters (100,000 PGCs per galaxy) have been brought out of cold storage by close encounters with its many galaxy neighbors. The great age (13 Gyr), large density, small stars, and spherical symmetry of globular star clusters are all interpreted as fossils of the weak or non-turbulence of the early universe when they were formed soon after the primordial gas emerged from the plasma epoch. The galaxy itself (along with all other galaxies) fragmented just before this event 300,000 years after the big bang, with the fossil non- turbulence plasma density 10^-17 kg m^-3 of the protosupercluster fragmentation at 30,000 years. In the present scenario, the average mass density of M87 has been monotonically decreasing by diffusion and the expansion of the universe ever since, approaching the critical density of 10^-26 kg m^-3 corresponding to a flat Universe with kinetic energy and gravitation energy in precise balance.
astro-ph/9904362
,
astro-ph/9908335
,
astro-ph/9911264
[first]
[prev]
[Carl Gibson, (UCSD) 13]
[NEXT]
[last]