Chinese Journal of Nature ›› 2011, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (2): 70-73.

• Invited Special Paper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Major Catastrophes on the Scales of Celestial Objects:Violent Activities of Galaxies

ZHAO Jun-Liang   

  1. Professor, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200030, China
  • Received:2010-11-19 Revised:2010-12-19 Online:2011-04-20 Published:2011-04-20

Abstract: More and more external galaxies with different morphological types have been found since Hubble’s initiative work in 1923. Among lots of galaxies, abnormal or peculiar ones are extremely attractive, where cosmic catastrophic events on the scales much larger than stellar objects, such as galactic collision or merging, happened or are happening, which can dramatically change structure, morphology, the kinematics and dynamical evolution of galaxies and the formation and evolution of stars in galaxies.