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Andromeda On Collision Course With the Milky Way

Posted by samzenpus on from the demolition-galaxy dept.

ananyo writes "From the Nature story: 'The Andromeda galaxy will collide with the Milky Way about 4 billion years from now, astronomers announced today. Although the Sun and other stars will remain intact, the titanic tumult is likely to shove the Solar System to the outskirts of the merged galaxies. Researchers came to that conclusion after using the Hubble Space Telescope between 2002 and 2010 to painstakingly track the motion of Andromeda as it inched along the sky. Andromeda, roughly 770,000 parsecs (2.5 million light years) away, is the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way.'"

9 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. 770,000 parsecs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought parsecs was a unit of time though? So 770,000 parsecs is about 4 billion years?

    So 12 parsecs is about 20 hours?

    1. Re:770,000 parsecs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The WHOOSH is strong with this one.

  2. Re:And this is news how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This may not be news to you, but I'm thankful to know so I could cancel my tickets to The Book Of Mormon while they're still refundable.

  3. Watch video of simulation of this collision by gupg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    NVIDIA showed a simulation of this collision running on their latest Tesla GPGPU based on the "Kepler" architecture

    Starts at around 1:00 on this video with a great explanation of the collision itself.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aByz-mxOXJM&feature=relmfu

    Sumit
    (NVIDIA employee)

  4. Re:And this is news how? by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, just in time to warn our Great^12 Grandchildren.

    Maybe we could embed the message in some giant, black humming monolith, or something...

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  5. Oh no! Not the Galaxy! by Cyberllama · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's where I keep all my stuff!

  6. Re:Red Giant Sol? by toruonu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If after 3-4 billion years we're still stuck on this rock we deserve to burn up...

  7. Imagine by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine how awesome the sky would look once Andromeda is near enough to dominate the view.

    Imagine how awesome the sky would look with two galaxies, one of them much larger than our own, sprawling around it.

    Imagine how such a view might affect the belief systems and cultures of all the advanced life forms that might be able to perceive it.

    Hopefully, I will be there, billions of years in the future, and be able to experience it.

  8. Re:don't panic, it's just the end of the world by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yep, it was written in Java.

    The first billion went while they were waiting for Eclipse to open.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."