Is there new types of galaxies that's not discovered yet? of course there are, the universe is a massive playground, but what about this one. According to a May 10 paper in The Astrophysical Journal, astronomers have found a "rectangular-looking" galaxy some 68 million light-years away in Eridanus the River.
Astronomers typically classify galaxies by their shapes, using three general categories - ellipsoidal, disk-like, and irregular. But the odd shape of the new galaxy, dubbed LEDA 074886, doesn't seem to fit any of these groups .
It's one of those things that just makes you smile because it shouldn't exist, or rather, you don't expect it to exist," says lead author Alister Graham of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
The unusual shape is possibly the result of a collision between two spiral galaxies. Such a scenario would have flung the stars of each outward to form the rectangular shape, while the galaxies' gas sank to the center, producing the dark disk there. This discovery should help astronomers better model galactic formation and evolution.
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