View of the action 31 million years ago. M51 &M51A and the rest of the crew.
The pressure waves that create the spiral arms are independent of the orbital motion of the stars which revolve 10x as fast as the arms, studies show on this near, bright and face on galaxy pair. The arms likely result more from the interaction with its companion galaxy that orbits the Whirlpool seen as disorganized smaller blob, slightly obscured. The only other known example of pressure waves are here on earth and they result as sound or audio to us. The spiral arms are bunched up galactic molecules in pressure waves, just as sound is bunched up air molecules in pressure waves. There’s other evidence for the collision or confusion of light and sound at galactic scales much as there is for time and space. In a very quiet and dark site you can hear very bright meteors or fireballs. It results from the sum total of nearby reflective surfaces vibrating from the meteor light at an audible frequency making something like a whoosh or shish sound. Sensitive microphones can record the vibrational noise from brightly lit metallic membranes and decode audio sent by a light source that encoded the audio. Using software one can change spoken word into ordinary light and recognize it with an ordinary audio microphone and a stretched taught potato chip bag. It’s true and and thought provoking and why astrophotography is the same as playing a guitar.
View of the action 31 million years ago. M51 &M51A and the rest of the crew.
The pressure waves that create the spiral arms are independent of the orbital motion of the stars which revolve 10x as fast as the arms, studies show on this near, bright and face on galaxy pair. The arms likely result more from the interaction with its companion galaxy that orbits the Whirlpool seen as disorganized smaller blob, slightly obscured. The only other known example of pressure waves are here on earth and they result as sound or audio to us. The spiral arms are bunched up galactic molecules in pressure waves, just as sound is bunched up air molecules in pressure waves. There’s other evidence for the collision or confusion of light and sound at galactic scales much as there is for time and space. In a very quiet and dark site you can hear very bright meteors or fireballs. It results from the sum total of nearby reflective surfaces vibrating from the meteor light at an audible frequency making something like a whoosh or shish sound. Sensitive microphones can record the vibrational noise from brightly lit metallic membranes and decode audio sent by a light source that encoded the audio. Using software one can change spoken word into ordinary light and recognize it with an ordinary audio microphone and a stretched taught potato chip bag. It’s true and and thought provoking and why astrophotography is the same as playing a guitar.