Urge to Merge: Here Comes Andromeda

space.com ^ | 08 December 2005 | Laurance Doyle

[saganite]

Here's what the future holds for those with a really really long view.

[Brilliant]

Bush's fault.

[Hoodlum91]

" the most spectacular will be the merging of the Andromeda spiral galaxy with the Milky Way in about six billion years."

That's a lot of foreplay.

[martin_fierro]

the most spectacular will be the merging of the Andromeda spiral galaxy with the Milky Way in about six billion years.

Remind me to be really grumpy in 5.9 billion years.

[Lancey Howard]

As an example of the last, the dinosaurs had over 200 million years to develop a comet deflector, but never did so. Some dinosaurs were bipedal, had opposable claws, and were pretty intelligent—so why didn’t they, for example, invent space travel?

Scrappleface is awesome!

[saganite]

Thanks for beaming in from another thread! LOL!

[Lancey Howard]

(And now here I am beaming in from a Tookie thread:)

"_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _."

[Lacroix]

If I put a dollar in the bank right now, with compound interest, I'll be all set for Andromeda. I'll probably be able to buy a nice place overlooking the galactic collision. Can't wait.

[MaDeuce]

Damm ... I'm gonna have to get my bong and pack a few bowls, then re-read this thread so I can comprehend its meaning ... like WOW MAN!!

I'm sure that by the time the moon is so far away from the earth that a day will be a month long, man will have machines to position the moon anywhere we want ... that assumes that we have not vaporized our selves by then or be invaded by alien species and eradicated like the THING or the BORG.

[adorno]

" the most spectacular will be the merging of the Andromeda spiral galaxy with the Milky Way in about six billion years."

Hopefully by that time, NASA will have developed a plan to divert Andromeda away from the Milky Way. Good thing, because by that time Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck may not be around to blast Andromeda into smithereens..

[KevinDavis]

Yet Bush is doing nothing about it...

[adorno]

Yet Bush is doing nothing about it...

Too busy fighting a war right now. Maybe later.

[KevinDavis]

Well if he doesn't do somethin about it, I'm not going to vote for the GOP period..

[MaDeuce]

I'm sure John Kerry has a plan to save the gallaxy.

[saganite]

John Kerry is calling on our Galaxy to withdraw to the perimeter and negotiate with the Andromedans.

[wbill]

Beat me to it. :-(

moving out at an inch a year, in about 1.6 billion years the moon will no longer be able to stabilize our planet’s spin

Of all the things I need to worry about, this one is pretty low on my list. Quite a bit farther below bellybutton lint buildup, but a little above spontaneous combustion.

[wbill]

I bet if you asked Kerry about this in a 'town meeting', he'd 'have a plan'. And anything bad would be, well, it's been said already in this thread.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

PING! It's interesting that we'll merge with Andromeda at about the same time that the Sun will run out of fuel and get really bloated in size. Big enough, in fact, to swallow the earth and burn it to a crisp before it turns into a brown dwarf and dies out.

T-minus 5 billion...and counting!

[Semper Paratus]

Andromeda Strain PING!

[Crazieman]

Actually, on the Kardashev scale calculating power available by earth and our consumption by watts, we're roughly 0.7

Not 0.1