Do galaxies have life cycles as stars do? Will all spiral galaxies eventually become ellipticals?
Galaxies do evolve with time, but it’s not clear that spiral galaxies (by themselves) will ever become ellipticals: they may just burn out (but remain disks) when they finally run out of fresh gas to make new stars from. Collisions between galaxies do have an effect, though: it’s now thought that the result of a galactic merger is often an elliptical galaxy.
Related Questions
- I can believe that when galaxies ``collide\, no stars or planets actually collide. What if 2 spiral galaxies collide with one aimed right at the center of the other?
- What are the similarities between the life cycles of lower-mass stars and higher-mass stars?
- Is life more likely to be present in spiral galaxies or in elliptical galaxies?
