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An awesome new release from the Hubble Space Telescope celebrating their 18th anniversary. Hard to believe it's been up there that long. I understand our galaxy will suffer the same fate with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years.
If you scroll down the page, you can get the individual pictures. |
Makes you feel kinda small huh. | ||
The Hubble telescope is an amazing instrument that brings the universe to us in a clarity never before possible... Amazing images! Thanks for the heads up Garry. Dan | ||
"Makes you feel kinda small huh." Yeah, especially when you consider that even with a perfect telescope (which the even the Hubble telescope isn't close to yet), the volume of Universe it would be possible for us to see is still a totally insignificant fraction of the entire universe, and even that is expanding at an unimaginable rate which itself is ever increasing. Calling us an "insignificant spec" as many TV scientists like to say is a gross understatement of how small we really are.
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ONLY 4 BILLION YEARS!!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!! I need to get off my arse and finish building my galaxy collision shelter!! (It is a tad bit beefier than the doomsday asteroid/comet shelter.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81aJmjUK08s | ||
Being a big fan of astronomy, I learned about this on one of the episodes of The History Channel's Universe series of shows. The thing about the meeting of the galaxies is that it's not necessarily gonna be the end. Depending on how the merger happens, vast portions of each galaxy including the solar systems within it will remain almost unaffected depending on which parts of each galaxy face the most turmoil during the process. In some parts of the galaxy, you might not even notice any change whatsoever. | ||
Actually in most places there would be little or no change. Galaxies are mostly empty space, with such enormous gaps between bodies that two galaxies could pass straight through eachother without any real "contact". Of course, if the two cores collide (either directly or drag eachother in with there enormous gravity), it would create a supermassive black hole which would expell an enormous amount of X-Rays and Gamma Rays which would wipe out all life in either galaxy.... so I guess it depends what you mean by "notice any change"... the planets and stars in the spiral arms would likely remain the same, but any life would probably end when the cores collided. | ||
That wouldn't be dandy.. |