I suspect that the OP means “solar system” not “galaxy”.
<Stephen Hawking>
I call it a Hawking Blast.
</Stephen Hawking>
I feel your pain. I’m looking for a few good cites (more authoritative than a message board, at least); if I find any, I’ll let you know.
OP meant galaxy.
commasense, thanks for a straightforward answer. Makes sense to me.
Therefore it shall be known as Super-Duper NovaTM Hawking Blast.
The next time.
In a related note, if gravitons mediate the force of gravity, but nothing can escape a black hole, how do the gravitons pass the event horizon? Tunneling? Seems like an awful lot of tunneling…
Stuff does escape from black holes. Hawking radiation. It’s still theoretical, but so are gravitons.
Perhaps the OP means each star in a galaxy exploding simultaneously … you know, like everyone in China jumping off a chair?
(On review, that would be one huge chair.)
Amusing as it was, it was actually the least straightforward answer here.
Nah, I’m sure I saw a guy do one of those in a kung fu movie one time. You twist your right arm like this, and kick your enemys’ head off with both feet like this.
I have however just found out that it doesn’t work so well on cats.
Anyone got a band-aid? Maybe some gauze?
It was amusing.
If it were to happen - not that I’m arguing the more learned response here - I think I’d just call it a disaster.
Not only does it work for itself, but the etymology of “bad star” just fits too well, I think.
Not so fast, Mr. Smarty Pants! The OP’s original question was not “Could a galaxy explode?” but “What would it be called if a galaxy exploded?” [Emphasis mine.]
Pochacco comes along with the digression that such a thing is not possible, but bonitahi is undeterred and restates the essence of his/her question: “And the name they call that is…?” [Emphasis mine.]
dwc makes a pretty good joke, but then the whole thread goes off on a tangent about physics and astronomy and whatnot. You provide some factually correct but irrelevant rubbish about black holes, and succeed, with a few accomplices, in completely distracting bonitahi from the intent of the OP, which was clearly inspired more by philology than physics.
After a few more jokes, I finally took pity and provided the most straightforward and relevant answer to the OP: what it would be called. And unlike the rest of you, I didn’t rely on facts or science or anything like that, since the OP clearly wasn’t asking for facts. I tapped into the vast unseen forces that control the universe, opened my consciousness, and intuited that if a galaxy exploded, it would be called a Super-Duper Nova. And I dare anyone to disprove that. You couldn’t do it with both hands.
For the benefit of the terminally humor-challenged, this post is firmly tongue-in-cheek. I’m not mad at or insulting anyone, certainly not Q.E.D. who I suspect really is Stephen Hawking, Cecil Adams, or God. Or possibly all three.
You just can’t argue with logic like that.
bonitahi, a galaxy is mostly empty space. The majority of what is not empty space is hydrogen atoms. Every so often you see a star. There are photons constantly flitting around, but they don’t “exist” in most of the ways you’re thinking of. How can hard vacuum possibly explode?
Nothing, if something like that happened (and from the replies it seems unlikely, but still) nobody would be around to *name * it anything. So like most unexpected and highly undesirable situations it would mostly be called an “Oh Shi…”
The force of gravity, should we ever come up with a theory of quantum gravity, would be mediated by virtual gravitons, and they aren’t constrained by the speed of light.
As far as a name for a galaxy explosion, how about a Monster Space Kablooey?
At least that’s what I think Professor Calvin called it, although Doctor Hobbes, as I remember it, disagreed.
I accept your apology!
It wasn’t quite that. I think it was horrendous space kablooey. He was speaking about the big bang though, so that doesn’t count.