At the seam of mutual gravity: ultraviolet glass against soot. Two galaxies collide, and at the boundary where copper-glass spiral ring from the barred core meets velvet-soot dust lanes of the elliptical, a rippling shock front is shattering into a chain of overexposed starburst beads. The viewer feels tidal compression across the ribs because warped bars, lensing arcs, and time-graded tidal ribbons crowd the frame with a single, inescapable deformation.