On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 03:13:00 GMT, "Matthew Fields" >
wrote:

>In article >,
>Peter T. Daniels > wrote:
>
>>They're all just so inherently implausible -- kind of like, How did the
>>eye evolve?
>>--
>>Peter T. Daniels
>
>Ever seen planaria flatworms? or octopusses? Eyes have evolved
>something like 8 separate times, including "half-an-eye" phases where
>all they are is light-sensitive patches hooked up to the nervous
>system. A fuller awareness of what's already been explored in the
>natural world puts things like eyes into perspective as practically
>guaranteed to arise, while leaving questions like how galaxies get
>spiral structures unanswered (My current pet hypothesis is that almost
>all spiral galaxies have arisen from mergers of smaller galaxies which
>used to orbit each other, but the events take place on such a vast
>scale of time and space and my grasp of numerical solutions to General
>Relativity is too weak for me to simulate the hypothesis in a computer
>and see what features of galaxies it might predict which nobody has
>looked for before--but watching this game from the sidelines is
>certainly exciting, see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html for
>a wonderful archive of visual aids on this kind of topic).


There are some really interesting videos of supercomputer simulations
of colliding elliptical galaxies that give rise to many galactic
shapes seen in telescopes. I have this on video from a while back
(early 90's or late 80's - I don't really remember), so I don't know
if it's available on the net anywhere. I think they were done by JPL.

-Wendy