
Trans-galactic streamers feeding most luminous galaxy in the universe - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-trans-galactic-streamers-luminous-galaxy-universe.html
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mrhappyunhappy
350 trillion times luminosity of the sun?! I can’t even comprehend that! What
would that look like at the distance of our sun?!

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dogma1138
It doesn’t work like that since this is on a galactic scale, the only thing
you need for a galaxy to be 350 trillion times as luminous as the sun is a
galaxy with 350 trillion stars which are just as luminous as the sun.

Form an intra galactic viewpoint it wouldn’t look much different (at least to
a human observer) and the only luminosity that you would really care about
would still be your local star unless you are really close to something
special that can cook you.

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PhasmaFelis
Now, if you want to know what it would look like if the Sun suddenly became
350 trillion times more luminous, I think would probably look like your entire
body melting/evaporating in seconds.

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mikeash
I think it would be faster than that. Normal luminosity is roughly one
kilowatt per square meter. This would be roughly 3.5e17 W/m^s. The largest
nuclear bomb ever detonated was around 2e16 joules, so it would be like
getting a Tsar Bomba to the face ten times a second.

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empath75
It seems like quasars like this we’re a lot more common in the early universe—
I wouldn’t be surprised if our own galaxy was the result of a process like
that billions of years ago.

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m0rganic
so fascinating.. suns swallowing up other suns .. galaxies swallowing up other
galaxies!! the size of these celestial objects is immense.. so hard to get my
head around

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IngoBlechschmid
Indeed, awesome observations.

Sometime this also happens using the "intergalactic transport network", a
technical team which actually exists, exploiting low-energy transfer
trajectories. See for instance
[http://www2.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/papers/AmericanScientist2006....](http://www2.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/papers/AmericanScientist2006.pdf)
(especially its last page; sorry for linking to http) or
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NTjTxdNug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NTjTxdNug).

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hi41
Very nice work by the astronomers doing the observation. It would better if
the article calls it galaxy merger instead cannibalization.

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coleifer
"...those galaxies will escape their fate." \--- I just found it odd that the
author of this article anthropomorphized the galaxies.

