Her University of Birmingham colleagues, Duncan Forbes and Alejandro Terlevich, determined the ages of 50 elliptical galaxies. The two have since submitted a paper on their findings to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Ryden charted the shapes of these 50 galaxies relative to the ages that Forbes and Terlevich had calculated, which averaged about 8 billion years. A little over 3 billion years from now, our Milky Way is slated for that fate, Ryden said. One of our nearest neighbors, the Andromeda galaxy, is 12 billion billion miles away, but closing fast at more than 150 miles per second.
Elliptical galaxies are sort of the galactic equivalent of a heap of tangled rubble.
Most newly formed elliptical galaxies measure about twice as long as they do wide, she explained. If stars follow elongated orbits where they travel away from the central black hole and back again, it makes sense that the gravity from the black hole will eventually pull them from their orbit and kick them off in a random direction. Over time, the flatness disappears and the galaxy becomes rounder. Her research shows that younger, flatter elliptical galaxies tend to have bright centers. Older, more spherical elliptical galaxies have central cores that aren't as tightly packed with stars.