Galaxy collision warning - Take cover!!

[jandl100]

Interesting article and great picture!

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii114/jandl100/M31MilkyWay.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18285583

See our galaxy collide with the Andromeda galaxy in this amazing video!
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/347591/20120601/milky-way-galaxy-will-collide-andromeda-nasa.htm

[synsei]

I spotted this story too Jerry. Do you reckon 4.5 billion years is enough time to go make a cup of tea before we all die a fiery death? :D

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I hope they were doing somthing else with thier 5-7 year period other than just coming to a conclusion that something way beyond anyone's control is going to happen way after we have all managed to kill each other ;)

[prestonchipfryer]

Mind boggling. The two galaxies are travelling towards each other at 1,000,000 mph, that's right one million, and it's going to take 4 billion years. Don't worry about the human race, they will be long time gone. :)

[Audio Al]

I will have to put that in my diary

Dont want to miss it :lol:

[synsei]

I will have to put that in my diary

Dont want to miss it :lol:

Crap I've lost mine. I will have to go to Staples to get another, now I definitely won't have time to make a cuppa... :eyebrows:

[camtwister]

The wonderful illustration that Jerry has posted is part of the research of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
It brings back memories of my first degree. Officially, I studied Astrophysics at Bachelor's level.
Unofficially, I was studying Rock'n'Roll.

My thesis investigation involved tidal modelling, on a SUN supercomputer, of the interaction of the mice galaxies, NGC4676. I postulated a morphology based upon gravitational and kinetic reciprocation that explained our observations from Earth.
My simplistic version of the work of proper scientists, here:
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~gmackie/MAG/NGC4676.html
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/research/interaction_models/mice/
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994nsa..book..131G

The interaction of the Milky Way and Andromeda will get a bit sticky, from our solar system's perspective, in about four billion years time. My advice is not to lose too much sleep over this issue, but worry instead about the end of the Main Sequence lifetime of the Sun, which is scheduled for about the same moment. In an exciting timetable clash, the Sun will be running on empty, having used up its hydrogen fuel supply. To cut a long story short of very sober equations, this will cause the star to leave hydrostatic equillibrium (a fancy balancing act of radiative nuclear pressure and inward gravitational attraction) and collapse. As the Sun shrivels, it has sufficient mass to generate the required amount of heat to fuse Helium. Perversely, the star will then rapidly (in Universal terms) expand and barbecue the Earth.
This is called a Helium Flash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_flash

One of my favourite Townes Van Zandt anecdotes concerns his response to learning about the Helium Flash in a third grade science class at high school.
Given this perspective of the futility of the continuation of life on Earth within the context of four billion years notice, he threw down his books and marched out of his class, announcing to his teacher and peers,

"Well if the fucking Sun's burning out, then why do I have to worry about being here on time, shinin' my shoes, sittin' up straight and combing my hair? Goodbye!"

[jandl100]

Fascinating stuff! :thumbsup:

... if we're into showing off our astrophysical credentials, here's mine!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v299/n5883/abs/299535a0.html

http://yoursmiles.org/psmile/science/p0307.gif (http://yoursmiles.org/p-science.php)

Nowhere near as relevant to colliding galaxies as yours, though.

[webby]

Dammit, I've got a dental appointment that day!

[jandl100]

As linked by camtwister, here are some 'present day' colliding galaxies.
Awesome, innit ...

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii114/jandl100/Micegalaxies.jpg

[Macca]

As linked by camtwister, here are some 'present day' colliding galaxies.
Awesome, innit ...



Not if you happen to be living in one of them :lol:

[bobbasrah]

Very Douglas Adams that statement Martin.....

[Macca]

Very Douglas Adams that statement Martin.....

I'll take that as a compliment ;)

[jandl100]

Werll, ackcherlly, there would probably be very little disruption to stars and planets, most of a galaxy is very thinly dispersed gas - in a lab it would be regarded as a very good vacuum!

It would be an amazing view, though! http://yoursmiles.org/tsmile/rulez/t2019.gif (http://yoursmiles.org/t-rulez.php)

[Reid Malenfant]

From death comes life :) There would be a whole load of new star formation :cool:

[camtwister]

here's mine!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../299535a0.html (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v299/n5883/abs/299535a0.html)



Did you spend all of your career at UCL, Jerry?
Haven't they recently established a cosmic chemistry department for Astrochemists? The paper that you linked to suggests that this is your area of expertise.

[jandl100]

I just did my grad (astronomy) and 3 yr post-grad (stellar chemical composition from UV spectra) at UCL. Then I left and got a proper job! :)

[MartinT]

To cut a long story short of very sober equations, this will cause the star to leave hydrostatic equillibrium (a fancy balancing act of radiative nuclear pressure and inward gravitational attraction) and collapse. As the Sun shrivels, it has sufficient mass to generate the required amount of heat to fuse Helium. Perversely, the star will then rapidly (in Universal terms) expand and barbecue the Earth.
This is called a Helium Flash.

It was my understanding that the Earth's atmosphere would be wrecked and the Earth itself gobbled up by the now red giant Sun well before this happens?

[synsei]

The irony is that our Sun will be nearing the end of its life as the galactic pile up begins, so if man manages to avoid his own increasingly imaginative attempts to kill himself off he had better get cracking developing inter-stellar space travel or the future looks bleak. Time to book me a ticket with Virgin Starways I reckon... :lol:

[Macca]

The only way to do it is to build a 'generation ship' and send it off to the next nearest habitable planet. It will take tens of thousands of years to get there but the decendants of the original crew would then populate Earth II. Otherwise there is no way we can make it out of the 'petri dish' before it goes bad.

[jandl100]

Sorry guys, but we are talking about galaxies colliding .... you know - collections of hundred of billions of stars, hundreds of thousands of light years across.
Just pootling off 4 light years or so to Alpha Centauri ain't gonna do the trick! :nono:

Anyhoo, as I said earlier - it's very unliklely that a given star will be affected. It's kind of like a very widely spaced swarm of birds passing thru each other, only even more so -distances between stars are huge - a close encounter is very unlikely for any particular star. So just relax, chill out and enjoy the view. :cool:
... oh, and stick around for 4 to 6 billion years. :lol:

[Reid Malenfant]

Anyhoo, as I said earlier - it's very unliklely that a given star will be affected. It's kind of like a very widely spaced swarm of birds passing thru each other, only even more so -distances between stars are huge - a close encounter is very unlikely for any particular star.
You're not considering the fact that every star is likely to be surrounded by a rather massive cloud of big lumps of ice. These are generally known as comets once they get a bit of a shove & start falling into the gravity well created by a star :)

Effectively these clouds of ice lumps could extend damn near half way between each stellar system, so while a star may well easily slip between any other, the consequences of thousands of comets all of a sudden making themselves know doesn't bode to well imho :eyebrows:


I still won't be about to see it, bit of a pity :(

[synsei]

You're not considering the fact that every star is likely to be surrounded by a rather massive cloud of big lumps of ice. These are generally known as comets once they get a bit of a shove & start falling into the gravity well created by a star :)

Effectively these clouds of ice lumps could extend damn near half way between each stellar system, so while a star may well easily slip between any other, the consequences of thousands of comets all of a sudden making themselves know doesn't bode to well imho :eyebrows:


I still won't be about to see it, bit of a pity :(

On the plus side you'll not have to go get ice from the fridge for your G&T for a while... :D

[jandl100]

You're not considering the fact that every star is likely to be surrounded by a rather massive cloud of big lumps of ice. These are generally known as comets once they get a bit of a shove & start falling into the gravity well created by a star :)

Effectively these clouds of ice lumps could extend damn near half way between each stellar system, so while a star may well easily slip between any other, the consequences of thousands of comets all of a sudden making themselves know doesn't bode to well imho :eyebrows:


I still won't be about to see it, bit of a pity :(

Ah. Hmm. Yeah. The old Oort Cloud thing. :hmm:
Gravitational disruption thereof leading to a repeat of the "late heavy bombardment" that pulverised the inner solar system early on in its history.

Yep, if that happened again I wouldn't want to be around even if the view was good! Having giga-tonnes of icey rubble land on your noggin is not good for your health. :nono:

[MartinT]

Yes, but rather than seeing the inside of a hospital room, think of the view you'd get. There are worse ways to die.

[synsei]

Yes, but rather than seeing the inside of a hospital room, think of the view you'd get. There are worse ways to die.

+1 ;)

[camtwister]

It was my understanding that the Earth's atmosphere would be wrecked and the Earth itself gobbled up by the now red giant Sun well before this happens?


My post was facetious and you are correct, Martin, about the loss of atmosphere. Debate, however, continues about whether our planet will be gobbled up during the Red Giant phase. As the Sun trundles along the Hertzprung-Russell path, helium burning occurs in a shell outside of the hydrogen exhausted core, which initiates the expansion stage of the Red Giant process. This does occur before the Helium Flash but is due to helium fusion.
The Sun will lose mass as a Red Giant, and so although our atmosphere will disperse and surface temperature will rise, the Earth's orbit may drift outwards (due to a changing gravitational interaction with the star and surrounding matter) sufficiently to prevent it becoming molten. Or maybe not.

Either way, the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades.

[MartinT]

Either way, the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades.

LOL - Timbuk 3, and yes I saw them live.

As for whether the Earth's orbit expands to avoid the red giant, I shall report back...

[Macca]

As for whether the Earth's orbit expands to avoid the red giant, I shall report back...

Please do. because if it doesn't then I am really not going to bother re-painting the front door.

[nat8808]

One of my favourite Townes Van Zandt anecdotes involved err... a night out in Tennessee with a bottle of bourbon, a gun and a couple of local girls??

err.. Do you mean Charles Hard Townes?

I just wikipedea'd Townes Van Zandt to see where he came from to make a joke about his best anecdote but turn's out he's a Texan folk singer songwriter instead. Charles Hard comes up as the physicist (hehe - I recon you quickly googled his surname to get the rest but didn't quite check out the full details).

[camtwister]

Huh?

No. Your 'reckoning' is incorrect.
I meant exactly what I typed in post 7.
I was refering to Townes Van Zandt (Fort Worth 1944 - Smyrna 1997) whose music I have been collecting, enjoying, researching and recording for the past twenty years.


ydd2zoP1Tz0

[synsei]

'When Galaxies Collide!!!' The amazing new sequel to 'When Worlds Collide' only BIGGER, BRIGHTER and with far more MASS. The best B Movie since ... er ... the last one. Coming to a sky near you in 4.5 billion years... :D

[anthonyTD]

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/42896/earth-to-collide-with-nibiru-on-july-21-2012/
A...

[synsei]

Perhaps if these people want to die so badly we should oblige them (only joking of course)... :lol:

[prestonchipfryer]

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/42896/earth-to-collide-with-nibiru-on-july-21-2012/
A...

:rfl: