Posted on 06/03/2012 9:08:20 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home galaxy. Still, the errors in sideways velocity appear sufficiently large to admit a good chance that the central parts of the two galaxies will miss, slightly, but will become close enough for their outer halos to become gravitationally entangled. Once that happens, the two galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to become one large elliptical galaxy -- over the next few billion years. Pictured above is an artist's illustration of the sky of a world in the distant future when the central parts of each galaxy begin to destroy each other. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire surrounding Local Group of Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic of research for years to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
NOTE: Partial Lunar Eclipse Tonight: Gallery of photogenic past lunar eclipses New England and eastern Canada will miss the entire eclipse since the event begins after moonset from those regions. Observers in western Canada and the USA will have the best views with moonset occurring sometime after mid-eclipse.
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Bush’s fault.
LMAO! I guess I’ll have to adjust my maximum time setting in my Delorean!
Holy Clap!
Impossible to truly tell without long-term measurements from a third-person perspective.
I’m talking about hundreds of millions of years, and a distance of a few thousand light years away.
Should read, "... for billions of years to come."
Question..if all started with a “big bang” from one point then shoun’t all galaxys be expanding away from that point and each other?
This is terrible news! The world populations should have a special tax levied on them to prevent this from happening!
You are not supposed to ask questions like that.
Now, go back in to the corner and stay there until we tell you you can leave!
CA....
“George Noory .... call your office.”
> You are not supposed to ask questions like that.
In general you're correct, the universe is expanding.
However, in the expansion, there's still lots of opportunity for individual pieces to mix and recombine, dance around each other, etc. That's how structures like spiral galaxies formed in the first place -- they weren't created as spirals and so forth from the beginning -- they gained their shapes over immense stretches of time. On a smaller scale, explosions of huge stars or groups of stars stir the pot, black holes create distortions, etc. It's incredibly slow and stately, one might say graceful, in the literal sense of being an expression of God's Grace.
The Creation is beyond our comprehension, but it sure is pretty, and fun to marvel at.
“However, in the expansion, there’s still lots of opportunity for individual pieces to mix and recombine, dance around each other, etc.”
That’s what I also learned about the local bar down the street!
I think that may have more to do with the distortions caused by black holes... ;-)
There is no point in the universe which is the center of expansion. The universe is LIKE the surface of a sphere which is expanding ... every point on the surface is equivalent, and each point sees everything receding from it.
Ah, but how then can the Andromeda Galaxy be approaching us? The answer is that it is nearby, and the expansion is reflective of a tendency over a much larger scale. The collision of Andromeda with the Milky Way is a local event, like an asteroid strike on the earth.
Don't wallow in your own ignorance. Just a tip.
The Milky Way has already collided with several other galaxies.
Still here.
Then take off every Zig.
For great justice.
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