Posted on 07/04/2018 6:47:21 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Southern Hemisphere stargazers have it good. From anywhere on Earth, on a very dark night, the band of the Milky Way can be seen to stretch across the sky in a sideways view through the disk of our spiral galaxy. From the southern hemisphere we can also see the part of the band where it widens into a bright bulge of stars, veiled by lanes of dust, surrounding the supermassive black hole at the very core of the galaxy.
Also from the south, due to the orientation of the Earth and the Solar System, we can see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, dwarf satellite galaxies caught in the Milky Way’s gravity. One thing we can’t see, though, is the Andromeda Galaxy.
Which is too bad, since Andromeda, with its trillion stars and central black hole as massive as 100 million suns, is hurtling toward us at 110 km a second.
Galactic collisions are commonplace in the cosmos. Our best theories for how galaxies grow include a healthy dose of cannibalism, at least for the larger ones. Here in the Milky Way, astronomers (known in this context as ‘galactic archaeologists’) have found long streams of stars tracing arcs and loops around the sky, illuminating the remains of smaller objects unravelled by galactic gravity as they fell towards us long ago.
The physics of how galaxies rip each other apart is the same as that which would be responsible for your grisly demise if you fell into a black hole, and it’s why Mars’s moon Phobos will one day be reduced to a ring of pebbles encircling the red planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...
Damn! Do we have time to pack a few things? =;-)
We only have about 3-4 billion years to pack before the collision.
It’s coming at 66 miles per second, the speed of light is over 186,000 mps and it is about 2 million light years away. We’ve got a while. I’m more worried about what the Dems have up their sleeves.
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, wait......We are anyway....
OK...back to politics....
It’s because of global warming. Maybe plastic bags and straws too.
It’s because of global warming. Maybe plastic bags and straws too.
“Galactic Tide.” What a name for a Starship.
When we collide there will be a huge poof of plastic grocery bags and plastic straws!
“..it is about 2 million light years away. We’ve got a while.”
It’s amazing how short our lives are, in the context of the cosmos. I read Andromeda is ~2.5 million light years away, which comes out to something like 23,652,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers (or 14,696,671,438,797,422,592 miles). If I haven’t screwed up a decimal somewhere that gives us ~ 6,818,131,711 years (wonder if the Mueller investigation will be done?).
Worry about the coming global cooling and falling magnetic protection against cosmic energy we are currently undergoing.
Global warming in inconvenient...global cooling will kill millions.
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is 41 degrees north of the equator—so it is visible from a large portion of the southern hemisphere including the landmasses with a sizable human population. Punta Arenas, Chile, may be the only large city where it never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon, making it effectively invisible.
Each galaxy has billions of stars and almost none will actually collide. Think of two clouds of gnats flying through each other. The article’s analogy with black holes (’spaghettification’) is completely wrong. The odds of any two stars actually colliding is pretty much zero.
Due to gravitational effects the two spiral galaxies will eventually form a single elliptical galaxy. That’s it.
“There’s going to be a galactic merger in a few billion years.”
“Oh, my god. I’ve to to get home to the family!”
“Why? A billion years is a long time.”
“Oh, whew. I thought you said ‘millions.’”
*pingeroonie*
110 km a second. That’s 400,000 mph. Andromeda is 2 million , 300,000 light years away. (A single light year is 6 trillion miles) Yeah, you’ve got enough time to pack a bag. Just make sure you go to the bathroom before you leave and turn out the lights, ok?
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