Galaxies are pretty sparse, there are just eornomous spaces between the stars in each galaxy. A "collision" would amount to something like 2 clouds of mosquitoes passing through each other, with the exception that there'd be miles between each mosquito and the next... Hardly a catastrophe in my books.
Galaxies are pretty sparse, there are just eornomous spaces between the stars in each galaxy. A "collision" would amount to something like 2 clouds of mosquitoes passing through each other, with the exception that there'd be miles between each mosquito and the next... Hardly a catastrophe in my books.
IF IT CAN HAPPEN...IT WILL HAPPEN!
We constantly learning new stuff so it never too soon for a similar discussion.
A countdown. Not really sure how to handle the countdown since we don’t know when it will happen. I don’t feel comfortable with handle the unknowns of the countdown.
Galaxies are pretty sparse, there are just eornomous spaces between the stars in each galaxy. A "collision" would amount to something like 2 clouds of mosquitoes passing through each other, with the exception that there'd be miles between each mosquito and the next... Hardly a catastrophe in my books.
A direct collision between any two objects is very unlikely indeed, even with hundreds of millions of objects.
But galaxies are not clouds of mosquitoes. The combined gravitational pull of all the stars, interstellar dust and dark matter of one galaxy affects the movement of the objects in the other, hurling objects on unexpected trajectories. Some may be flung towards the centre and swallowed by the super massive black hole there, some ejected out completely, and yes, some may be nudged on a collision path towards each other.
All of this may start millions of years before the actual galactic collision even starts in earnest. Just the mutual proximity is enough. And now think about the effects of two super massive black holes in the galactic cores merging. Just an ordinary black hole sucking in an ordinary dust cloud is bad news enough, if you happen to be in the path of the ejection beam. The energy released by two black holes merging would be enough to strip bare any planet within a few thousand light years. How about two super massive black holes merging? The released energy would outshine the entire galaxy by several orders of magnitude.
So I would not say that a galaxy merger is something to sneeze at.
We constantly learning new stuff so it never too soon for a similar discussion.
A countdown. Not really sure how to handle the countdown since we don’t know when it will happen. I don’t feel comfortable with handle the unknowns of the countdown.
Exactly... Say the current estimate is 2 billion years.
Now what is 2 billion years, is it exactly 730000000000 days? Yes and leap years, there are 500000000 leap years so actually it comes to 730500000000 days.
Also, when does one determine that the collision has happened, is it when the first 2 stars of the colliding galaxies pass each other or is it when the centers of gravity of galaxies passes each other?
There is a lot of difference between those estimates and more is created depending on which direction the LMG approaches the Milky Way; doe to the shape of the galaxy it is either 500 light years or 50000 light years.
This uncertainity causes fairly large uncertainity to the estimated collision date too; as the relative approach speed is around 450km/s it comes to around 667 years per light year, yielding the difference between 121727500 days or 12172750000 days depending on the direction.
This means that the countdown would be between 730500000000 days and 742672750000 days.
Conclusion; countdown is not possible without further data.
When the **** hits the fan. Not only smoke but full blown explosions. When stars collide is when it happens. Atleast that is my assumtion. All the other small rocks. Planets and **** doesn’t count as a collision. Have to be star vs star!
742672750000 days Ey...
Someone else have to take care of this countdown
