Talk:Globular cluster

The intro states that " In spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, (GCs) are mostly found in the outer spheroidal part of the galaxy – the galactic halo."

But the following section, "History of observations" claims that "A large majority of the Milky Way's globular clusters are found around the galactic core".

I feel like the article might benefit from some clarification on this point. Nubur (talk) 08:29, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

: I think the issue may be the use of the word "outer". The halo surrounds the pancake-shaped spiral galaxy, but it isn't a shell. Globulars can orbit closer to the nucleus while (mostly) remaining in the halo. I think the conflict could be resolved by stating, "A large majority of the Milky Way's globular clusters are found in the halo around the galactic core". Praemonitus (talk) 14:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The second sentence in this article is in a very early part, something like an intro.

That sentence now has the words 'They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member stars, all orbiting in a stable, compact formation.' How stable is stable? There are such objects known of as meteorites that do impact the Earth, but the word 'stable' at this critical point might imply that they are 'stable' like planets in our solar system in a fundamental manner that would keep them from passing by other objects or colliding even though the formation might be 'compact'. Stellar collisions in the spiral arm of the Milky Way might very well be rare because they may comparatively be not 'compact', but globular clusters generally are more 'compact' in comparison.

I would suggest that the word 'stable' be dropped from that sentence. It might imply that some sort of phenomenon is going on in the cluster to keep them from statistically colliding even though the systems are also 'compact'. They might gradually get some internal dynamics, but this is not discussed by the article. There is a lot of interstellar distances between many objects, but the word 'stable' might imply something that is not actually true. I think the word 'compact' of course is actually appropriate. Do words have meaning when they do not refer to something specific? Who knows. 2601:1C2:1000:8570:10F5:28C8:DF06:5E32 (talk) 21:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

: Your typical globular is over 10 billion years old, and has been around since the early days of the Universe. If that isn't a stable formation, I don't know what is. Praemonitus (talk) 23:20, 28 June 2024 (UTC)