Space
Milky Way And Andromeda: An Inevitable End
Brooke James
First Posted: Jan 20, 2017 03:40 AM EST
Elementary science taught children that the Earth and the Solar System are located in the Milky Way galaxy. It also taught children that it has a neighboring galaxy called the Andromeda.
What elementary science failed to tell the children, however, is that these galaxies are traveling at around 400,000 kilometers per hour and could one day create a massive explosion as they crash into each other.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Andromeda is hurtling towards the Milky Way at 110 kilometers per second, which means that people do not have to worry for now. The climactic, destructive collision will not happen for another 4 to 5 thousand million years, and people and all their known loved ones are long dead by then.
This impeding collision is not even a new discovery. In 2014, National Geographic reported that there will be a lot of collateral damage in the event of the crash. The galaxies as people know them will not survive. However, the Sun is expected to. By then, it will have grown just enough to roast the surface of the Earth, and any life forms could be treated to some sort of fantastical cosmic event in the skies.
With the explosion will also be a new cosmic object in the form of a giant elliptical galaxy. While it sounds like something out of a science fiction story, science has actually been studied with the help of Newton's laws of gravitation. In an episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, host Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained that the distances of stars have been so great, that few, if ever, would actually collide. He explained, "Any life on the worlds of that far-off future should be safe, but they will be treated to an amazing, billion-year long light show."
Unfortunately for us, we will be long gone before we could ever even hope to see this spectacle come to life.
See Now:
NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
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First Posted: Jan 20, 2017 03:40 AM EST
Elementary science taught children that the Earth and the Solar System are located in the Milky Way galaxy. It also taught children that it has a neighboring galaxy called the Andromeda.
What elementary science failed to tell the children, however, is that these galaxies are traveling at around 400,000 kilometers per hour and could one day create a massive explosion as they crash into each other.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Andromeda is hurtling towards the Milky Way at 110 kilometers per second, which means that people do not have to worry for now. The climactic, destructive collision will not happen for another 4 to 5 thousand million years, and people and all their known loved ones are long dead by then.
This impeding collision is not even a new discovery. In 2014, National Geographic reported that there will be a lot of collateral damage in the event of the crash. The galaxies as people know them will not survive. However, the Sun is expected to. By then, it will have grown just enough to roast the surface of the Earth, and any life forms could be treated to some sort of fantastical cosmic event in the skies.
With the explosion will also be a new cosmic object in the form of a giant elliptical galaxy. While it sounds like something out of a science fiction story, science has actually been studied with the help of Newton's laws of gravitation. In an episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, host Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained that the distances of stars have been so great, that few, if ever, would actually collide. He explained, "Any life on the worlds of that far-off future should be safe, but they will be treated to an amazing, billion-year long light show."
Unfortunately for us, we will be long gone before we could ever even hope to see this spectacle come to life.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone