
The Intergalactic Winds That Built the Milky Way - ryan_j_naughton
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/07/milky-way-intergalactic-winds/535023/?single_page=true
======
lawless123
eh..

>"The atoms that built the solar system, the planets, and even our own bodies
may have come from another galaxy perhaps as far away as one light-year—nearly
6 trillion miles."

Must be a typo.

~~~
sukhdev
Yeah.. the Milky Way alone is 100,000 light years across.

~~~
cybervegan
I saw that too. Probably should have been a "giga-light year" or something.

------
netman21
Photons exciting particles are not winds. I hate these metaphors. Like the
Solar Wind. It can misguide very smart people. I was sitting on a plane next
to a former deputy director of NASA. After retiring he became a professor in
Ann Arbor, where I received my aerospace engineering degree. I asked him to
explain how the solar winds accelerate away from the sun. He proceeded to
explain it was just like the throat of a rocket engine. I was so shocked I
stopped talking to him. At a density of 3 "atoms" per cubic centimeter the
solar winds are closer to vacuum than the very best vacuum achievable in a
laboratory, by a factor of 30! There is no fluid dynamics that works when
particles cannot interact with each other. Navier-Stokes works on real fluids,
not on vacuum. So call me when The Atlantic has an article titled
Intergalactic Currents That Built The Milky Way.

------
visarga
Over the years I have seen astronomy become more like biology - diverse both
in the kinds of objects it describes and their behavior.

