Why are galaxies round as a pizza instead of round like a sphere?
In: Physics
Galaxies (and solar systems) start out as large balls of gas (mostly hydrogen). If you get enough gas together, gravity takes over and starts to pull the gas towards the center. If none of the gas was moving, it would all pull towards the center and converge on one point at the center of the ball of gas. But due to the random motion of those particles, inevitably there will be one direction of motion, or rather one direction of rotation, that has more motion than all the other directions. So the ball of gas begins to converge, however since it’s spinning/rotating in that one direction, it ends up flattening like a pizza, instead of compressing to a point.
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