Do we really understand how galaxies are formed?

The continual feed of unexpected observations is forcing a critical re-evaluation of what we really know about galaxies and their formation thought to be due a condensation of matter under gravitational attraction. Even the Milky Way yields one surprise after another. It is amusing to witness how empirical findings are gradually leaving TGD as the only viable option.

Today's surprise was from Science alert (see this). It tells at layman level about the findings reported in an article accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters (see this).

Cattail is a gigantic structure with a length which can be as much as 16,300 light-years, discovered in the Milky Way. It is a filament which does not seem to be analogous to a spiral arm since it does not follow the warping of the galactic disk which is thought to be an outcome of some ancient collision. In the TGD framework this structure would be associated with a cosmic string, which has in some places thickened to a flux tube and generated ordinary matter in this process.

Also the spiral arms might be accompanied by cosmic strings. In any case, there would be a long cosmic string orthogonal to the galactic plane (jets are parallel to it quite generally) having galaxies along it and generated by the thickening of the cosmic string generating blackhole-like entities as active galactic nuclei.

Just yesterday I learned that the Milky Way also offers other surprises (see this).

One of them is that the galactic disk contains old stars that should not be there but in the outskirts of the galaxy which is the place for oldies whereas younger stars live active life in the galactic disk. This if one assumes that the usual view about the formation of galaxies is correct. This applies also to the weird filaments mentioned above.

In the TGD Universe, galaxies are not formed by a condensation of gas but by a process replacing inflation with a process in which cosmic strings thicken and their string tension - energy density - is reduced. The liberated energy forms the ordinary matter giving rise to the galaxy. This solves the dark matter problem: strings define dark matter and energy and no halo is needed to produce a flat velocity spectrum of distant stars. The collisions of cosmic strings are unavoidable in 3-D space and could have induced the thickening process creating the active galactic nuclei (quasars).

This process would be opposite to what is believed to occur in the standard model. What comes to mind is that the oldies in the disk are formed from a cosmic string portion in the galactic plane. The tangle of the cosmic string can indeed extend in the galactic plane over long distances and there can also be cosmic strings (associated with galactic spiral arms?) in the galactic plane, which would have almost intersected a cosmic string orthogonal to the plane inducing the formation of the Milky Way.

For the TGD views see for instance this, this) and this). For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

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