Quote:
Originally Posted by astroron
Yes Carl, What a coincidence  What are the chances of this happening again  
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There's a reasonable chance that the formation of a ring galaxy could happen at any stage in a galaxy's formation. If it's through collisional processes, then you have a good chance of it happening if the geometry of the collision allows it. It would have to be a head on, or near head on collision in order to generate the shockwaves that would create such a galaxy. You probably have about a 1-2% chance of it occurring. If it's a formation of a polar ring, then they occur in around 5-10% of interacting galaxies, and similarly the shape of the ring is due to the geometry of the interaction between the galaxies (plus the gravitational and other effects, of course).
If the ring is formed through the general formation processes of the galaxy, then that is a different matter altogether. They still aren't sure how that occurs but they have some hypotheses...namely those ones that I have already stated. However, there maybe other processes at work, but the least likely is some EM influence as proposed by EU. There's no evidence for it. The evidence for powerful EM forces at work (as is proposed) would be so obvious, you couldn't miss it, even in a cursory examination.
As for the other ring galaxy behind Hoag's....just coincidence, no more or no less. Given the numbers of galaxies in existence, there would be bound to be a few chance alignments such as this. You should know that as well as I do.