There Is Some Crazy-Looking Stuff In Space

A reader writes: “I was sitting there classifying galaxies on Galaxy Zoo and this mofo showed up. Death Galaxy?!?” Yes, among other wonderful qualities, our readers spend their spare time classifying galaxies. Look at this crazy beast! We turned to our Official Science-Explaining Person, Ann Finkbeiner, for ideas.

She writes: “That redshift shows it’s relatively close by. It doesn’t look like much, which can mean it’s a pathetic irregular galaxy or it’s just a bunch of gas that gravitationally bound itself. The red can mean it’s dusty or it’s old red stars or it’s cool or it’s going away from us. The blue can mean it’s young blue stars and it’s hot or it’s coming toward us. My personal theory is that it’s rotating really fast, the blue side coming right at us, the red going away.”

Ann also notes that the other hot new activity for helping science is… FoldIt! Where Galaxy Zoo is quite macro in scale, FoldIt deals with our tiny friends (and sometimes foes!), DNA.