This artist’s impression shows the merger between two galaxies leading to the formation of a disc galaxy. Upon merging, the shape of the galaxies is disturbed by their mutual gravitational interaction and results in a galaxy with a disc structure. Gas that is moving away from us appears red while the blue colour shows gas that is approaching. The contours together with the transition from red to blue indicate a gaseous disc that is rotating about the centre of the galaxy. The movie shows the collision of two disc galaxies, but the actual shape of galaxies prior to the collision in this study is not known. About the Object Type: • Early Universe : Galaxy : Type : Interacting Facility: Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Related releases "Violent Origins of Disc Galaxies Probed by ALMA New observations explain why Milky Way-like galaxies are so common in the Universe": http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1429/ For decades scientists have believed that galaxy mergers usually result in the formation of elliptical galaxies. Now, for the the first time, researchers using ALMA and a host of other radio telescopes have found direct evidence that merging galaxies can instead form disc galaxies, and that this outcome is in fact quite common. This surprising result could explain why there are so many spiral galaxies like the Milky Way in the Universe. Release date: 17 September 2014 Credit: NAOJ

• published: 30 Sep 2014
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