Thread: Our Galaxy Will Collide With WHAT?

Our Galaxy Will Collide With WHAT?

HPMG News | June 11, 2012

“Our Milky Way galaxy is on a collision course with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. This isn't speculation. NASA astronomers say with certainty it will happen. That's the bad news. The good news is that it won't happen for about four billion years - give or take.

And when the two do collide, it will be a stupendous galactic crash with the Milky Way getting a major makeover during the smashup. It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

The findings came through painstaking NASA Hubble Space
Telescope measurements of the motion of Andromeda, which also is known as M31. The galaxy is now 2.5 million light-years away, but it is inexorably falling toward the Milky Way under the mutual pull of gravity between the two galaxies and the invisible dark matter that surrounds them both.

"After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of Andromeda and our Milky Way, we at last have a clear picture of how events will unfold over the coming billions of years," said Sangmo Tony Sohn of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.

And that scenario is a lot like a baseball batter watching an oncoming fastball-except it's one that will take 4 billion years to connect.

Andromeda is moving toward the Milky Way at about 250,000 miles per hour. For perspective that is fast enough to travel from the Earth to the moon in one hour.

Computer simulations derived from Hubble's data show that it will take an additional two billion years after the encounter for the interacting galaxies to completely merge under the tug of gravity and reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly seen in the local universe.

Although the galaxies will plow into each other, stars inside each galaxy are so far apart that they will not collide with other stars during the encounter. However, the stars will be thrown into different orbits around the new galactic center. Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today.

Why do such collisions occur? The universe is expanding and accelerating, and collisions between galaxies in close proximity to each other happen because they are bound by the gravity of the dark matter surrounding them. The Hubble Space Telescope's deep views of the universe show such encounters between galaxies were more common in the past when the universe was smaller. “

http://netscape.compuserve.com/whats...=20120611-1102
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M31 is on its way to rearrange our Solar System and is gradually being pulled by gravity and there will be a giant Fourth of July kinds of explosions as Andromeda comes careening into our galaxy, the Milky Way, about four billion years from now. M31 is 2.5 million light years away, traveling at 250,000 mph, and will take about four billion years to arrive.

Although the galaxies will hit each other, the stars inside each galaxy are too far apart to cause damage, but the sun will be flung into different parts of our galaxy so our climates will change.

After the initial impact the stars will have been thrown into different orbits around a new center which will take another two billion years for it to form around a single galaxy again with the usual orbiting planets with their hosts of moons and stars.

Does an Ant need to question the Taxi Driver's driving record and license?

away from the core sounds better then closser in not like earth is going to be in great shape for us in 4 billion years any way not naturally any way

It would be fun to take a cruise in a ship near light speed, which would enable you to use time dilation in order to survive until the two galaxies actually meet. But, yeah, you'd be screwed big-time as far as getting back to Earth. I suppose the situation would be more akin to Star Trek Voyager, wandering the (newly reformed) galaxy in search of home And that home would likely have to be a different world, because the sun will have gone red giant at least by that time, if not beyond. I think white dwarf was predicted to follow, after it sloughs its expanded exterior. Actually, I wonder how long there will be earth-like planets around at all. The cooler a star, the longer its life will tend to be, but none of them capable of supporting earths will last forever. Eventually, they and planets will also stop forming. The requisite energy will eventually be lost to entropy..

by then space ferits will have discoverd hot to create energy from the emotions of middle school girls they exploit via magic ..or that might have been an anime i guess evrything will just die then

Science is always reinventing itself. At one time not too long ago you would be laughed at if you suggested the moon was part of the earth and formed from a collision. The same goes for almost all science. Most of what is science truth today will likley be myth a hundred years from now. As for M31 colliding with our milky way, that sounds probable. Observational astronomy is a hobby of mine. You guys know you can see M31 with the naked eye eh? FYI ; "The Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object you can see with your naked eyes, two million light years away. It is visible as a dim, fuzzy star from a dark sky site. With binoculars you can clearly see the elliptical shape of the galaxy." Go to http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~huffman/m31.html for more info~

reva

The biggest threat to Earth from this isn't that we'll run into a star, or that a star will run into our sun. It's the threat of a gravitational pulls disrupting the orbits of the planets in our solar system, possibly loosing one or more of them from orbit around the sun. It would also knock a bunch of comets and asteroids all over the place, greatly increasing the chance that we'll be hit with one big enough to cause an extinction level event.

Plus, the timing on this is wrong compared to every article I've read about it. This article claims 4 billions years, whereas everything I've read says 6 billion or more. Our sun is predicted to exhausted it's fuels supply by then, increased it's size to the point that it swallows up Mercury and Venus, with the Earth either burning up, or getting sucked into the sun as well. Earth likely won't even be here when we start getting close to Andromeda.

Originally Posted by Junkieturtle

1) The biggest threat to Earth from this isn't that we'll run into a star, or that a star will run into our sun...2) Plus, the timing on this is wrong compared to every article I've read about it. This article claims 4 billions years, whereas everything I've read says 6 billion or more. 3)Earth likely won't even be here when we start getting close to Andromeda.

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1) Agreed, everything about the universe teaches us patience; our lives are but a fleeting instant in the grand scheme of the universe. But we earthlings do have the capacity to f**k up our planet...we are busy each day killing ourselves on a host of things that are bad for our health, and our quality of life, and it is all from selfish greed, money and power.

2) The time doesn't matter; Earth will still be in orbit, but dead. It will be but a shell of what it once was. The pollution plus the breakage of the ozone layers will have allowed all the harmful rays into Earth destroying the air, water, soil quality, thus the ability of animals and humans to adapt and survive. All that will be left are old plastic Pepsi bottles, McDonald's quarter-pounder paper food wrappers, and old used tires.

3) Earth will still be rotating as if nothing has happened to it's inhabitants thru greed, and not understanding sufficiently the marvelous mechanism called our physical environment. Earth was given the precise recipe for success, and humans blew it.

Inhabitants from other planets will gaze up into the night skies at Earth, knowing that it used to be inhabited but somehow went extinct and wonder aloud if they are the only humans on planets in the overwhelmingly beautiful universe.

Originally Posted by raymondo

Does an Ant need to question the Taxi Driver's driving record and license?

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It would depend upon which has the larger brain, enabling them to realize the importance of asking...or the importance of even answering.....