Motions of stars inside elliptical galaxies?

Drakkith

Well, lets look at the Sun. It is 1,392,000 km in diameter. The distance to the nearest star is over 4 light years away. That's 37,842,921,890,323.2 km. That means the distance to the nearest star is over 27,186,007 times as far as the Sun is across. So what we have are VERY VERY VERY small objects at HUGE distances from each other all moving around. On top of that, to have an actual collision would require the two stars to be approaching at very specific vectors, velocities, etc. The overwhelming majority of encounters between objects in space results in both objects simply passing by each other. Collisions do occur, but it is pretty rare.

dougettinger

May I summarize and please express any opposing variation or opinion.

The majority of stars in an elliptical galaxy are highly organized and move in elliptical orbits not necessarily in the same direction about a concentrated central mass of the galaxy. Orbital perturbations are fairly random but statistically homogeneous. This in turn maintains a fairly homogeneous distribution of stars that tend to become denser toward the center.

Thanks for all your help, Doug Ettinger