Why are there arms on a spiral galaxy?
Spiral galaxies are named for a reason, their spiral shape. I'm wondering where they got the arms from and why are they not just flat disks rotating around them selves?
Posted Dec 31, 2012, 7:36 AM UTC
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Good question. One might expect a plain flat disc if the material they fed upon was completely uniform, but of course the early universe was not completely uniform (see variation in cosmic microwave background radiation as solid evidence). As matter clumped together here and there, the clumps were then attracted to each other and... well, this sexy video can explain it far better than I can:
http://www.cscs.ch/newsroom/science/2011/milky_way_birth/index.html
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From Wikipedia:
The pioneer of studies of the rotation of the Galaxy and the formation of the spiral arms was Bertil Lindblad in 1925. He realized that the idea of stars arranged permanently in a spiral shape was untenable. Since the angular speed of rotation of the galactic disk varies with distance from the centre of the galaxy (via a standard solar system type of gravitational model), a radial arm (like a spoke) would quickly become curved as the galaxy rotates. The arm would, after a few galactic rotations, become increasingly curved and wind around the galaxy ever tighter. This is called the winding problem. Measurements in the late 1960s showed that the orbital velocity of stars in spiral galaxies with respect to their distance from the galactic center is indeed higher than expected from Newtonian dynamics but still cannot explain the stability of the spiral structure. Since the 1960s, there have been two leading hypotheses or models for the spiral structures of galaxies: Star formation caused by density waves in the galactic disk of the galaxy. The SSPSF model – star formation caused by shock waves in the interstellar medium. These different hypotheses do not have to be mutually exclusive, as they may explain different types of spiral arms