Do you think M51 actually looks like this today, that is 23 million years the image we take today? (yes, confusing question, but it is what it is....)
Well, the story is, I uploaded my fellow Adem's M51 image on ChatGPT, and I asked “If this is how M51 looked like 23 million years ago, can you extrapolate how it may actually look like now?
ChatGPT seemed to have a hard time. It rendered for a few minutes and shared the attached image.
It also added “if you want to do cosmic speculation again, I am here.” I found this a bit sarcastic...I must have heated up its microchip.
498535064_10162383883092347_4388830429795697475_n.jpg
Won't get into the semantics of relativity, but there is no operational meaning to saying that we are seeing this X million years ago. You cannot split up space and time this way. It's one of the persistent foundational mistakes that simply will not go away, and inhibit understanding of the universe at large, because it is repeated over and over until it becomes "true". We are seeing this as it is, now, and that's the only way to ever see it - now.
What a great photo! These interacting, highly dynamic systems are always pawned off onto statistically absurdly unlikely "collisions", which is just pure laziness (you can "put it on the computer", apply the wrong approximation, and stop thinking after that). I get the absolutely convincing sense that these galaxies were born together.
BTW here's something to chew on - the spiral shape of the galaxy is highly dependent on the direction from which it is viewed. Seen from another angle, not only would it not look the same, you might have real trouble even suspectiing it was the same system. That is because the diameter is large even in comparison to C. I remember some tale about a mountain that was considered a different thing entirely depending on how you approached it. When a local realized that 3 "different" mountains were actually one object, he was stunned and amazed 
-drl
Edited by deSitter, 14 May 2025 - 03:44 PM.
