The more massive a galaxy is, the faster its stars and gas will move. This relationship holds regardless of whether a galaxy looks like an ellipse, a cosmic pinwheel or some other odd shape, a new study finds.

This rule even applies to "train-wrecks" left after galaxies collide and merge with one another, which is surprising, said study team member Susan Kassin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). "It indicates that there is a remarkable regularity to galaxies, irrespective of what they look like," Kassin said.

The new finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, shows that the relation between a galaxy's mass and the orbital speed of its stars and gas is remarkably consistent over a wide range of galaxy shapes and over billions of years of galaxy evolution.

The galaxies were studied as part of the All-wavelength Extended Groth strip International Survey (Aegis), a collaborative effort involving nearly 100 international scientists and 10 different instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck II telescope in Hawaii.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-03-06-galaxy-rule_N.htm

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The cosmological constants are amazing, and absolutely perfect to support human life. The odds against this happeneing are astronomical, but we seem to live in a very well tuned universe.

The cosmological constants are amazing, and absolutely perfect to support human life. The odds against this happeneing are astronomical, but we seem to live in a very well tuned universe.

And if those constants were something other than they are now it's quite likely some other life form would be navel gazing and saying "Boy, things sure are eerily perfect for us to be here..."

And if those constants were something other than they are now it's quite likely some other life form would be navel gazing and saying "Boy, things sure are eerily perfect for us to be here..."

True, but when you take a really close look it at how it turned out , it's astounding, and very unlikely.

I just read a book on this subject, but because it was written by an atheist turned Christian, it's automatically ignored by many people, even though it's based on very compelling scientific data.

It's called "The case for a Creator" by Lee Stroebel, and I found it to be very fascinating. I was already aware of much of the information in this particular book, but it was still a good read IMO.

Yes, this universe is perfectly tuned for us to live...at the moment. If it weren't we wouldn't be here.
Some of the latest theories propose that parallel universes exist, and many physcists are beginning to accept this view. And if this is the case, then every possible configuration of a universe that could exists does somewhere. If that is the case, then you can't say the fact our universe supports lifeforms like ourselves is evidence for a creator. An entirely different argument would have to be formulated for that.

True, but when you take a really close look it at how it turned out , it's astounding, and very unlikely.

I just read a book on this subject, but because it was written by an atheist turned Christian, it's automatically ignored by many people, even though it's based on very compelling scientific data.

It's called "The case for a Creator" by Lee Stroebel, and I found it to be very fascinating. I was already aware of much of the information in this particular book, but it was still a good read IMO.

I might have a look.

I will say that how unlikely something appears to be is not "compelling scientific data." Presenting a case by quoting the values of physical constants and saying that if they were something different, even a little different, we would not be here is not really "science" in the traditional sense.

Look, any one of us is a very unlikely thing to have happened: your mother had something approaching 400,000 eggs to choose from and your dad's baby batter had as many as 200,000,000 sperm cells. The odds against any one sperm mating with any one egg are astronomical, yet it happened: here you are :| Does this point to the finger of god? If so, how do we explain mistakes, where a defective sperm or egg are involved producing an "imperfect" human?

As groff points out, it's at least as possible that there are innumerable other universes with all possible configurations as there is a single omnipotent being twiddling the knobs of a single universe to make it just so for us. Some would argue that it's highly unlikely that the universe was designed specifically for us and then to saddle us with weak, corporeal bodies, sitting on a tiny rock orbiting an unremarkable star far out in the middle of the universal grasslands. How does one explain quasars ten billion or more light years away? What purpose do phenomena like that serve if the universe was designed for us? WHy would an intentionally designed universe, made just so, just for us, include such things? Further, why would this tailored-for-us universe include things very dangerous to us: asteroids, radiation, gamma particles and the like?