[POWERSPHERE]

The milky way is just a part of a brain of a being so huge that it's last 15 years of life is 4 billion years of ours. We are just the tiniest fragment of nothing in it's neurological pathways. Life.

[Tesseract]

Humanity will either be long gone or watching the spectacle from the far side of the universe onboard our intergalatic starships.

it's possible we already have.

[Yagharek]

Yeah, this is well known for quite a while. I wish I could live forever to see events like these, or at least see if humanity is sufficiently advanced enough to flee. And anyway even if Earth did survive this, it wouldn't be much longer after 4 billion years that the sun will die out and expand, consuming the planet anyway.

I think the sun is due to consume the earth in about 5 billions years.

So you would have about 1 billion years extra leeway. Which incidentally is time enough for life to become extinct and arise again.

[-MB-]

humble guess, they would merge and nothing that is not happening already in the galactic core would happen. When talking about galactic collisions, you have to bare in mind that the vast part of the galaxies are just empty space. EDIT:Just like withe the asteroid belt. You would have to try really hard to hit something. It is not like in the movies. EDIT2: Consider the following. The nearest star to the Sun is 4.013 × 10^13 kilometers away. The Suns diameter is 1.392×10^6 km. This means that you could fit 30,769,230.7 Sun size stars in there On a side note, if I am not mistaking we are somewhere in the center of the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone. ^Quoted for truth. Yeah... apples and oranges wight there I guess this is a joke:

You don't need to be hit with anything, just been thrown out of an orbit of the sun is a death sentence for life.
Maybe it's just me, but if the sun we're to be flung out of its orbit, that would affect our orbit as well, to the extend we could be thrown out of the solar system.

[bud]

i wish i would be around to see that happen.

[endre]

You don't need to be hit with anything, just been thrown out of an orbit of the sun is a death sentence for life. Maybe it's just me, but if the sun we're to be flung out of its orbit, that would affect our orbit as well, to the extend we could be thrown out of the solar system.

This is an extremely slow process. In order to be thrown out of orbit the foreign object that exercises the new gravitational force, needs to come pretty close. So again, you have quite the space to miss an object like that.

[Lucky Forward]

This idea has been around for a while, right? I'm guessing the Hubble images just help confirm it?

Haven't we known about this forever?

This is old news, and it's thought that it'll be so gradual that while it could have the potential to make some interesting things in our galaxy, it probably wouldn't hurt our solar system much.

Yeah, this is well known for quite a while.

Didn't we know it will happen for ages?

Why is this news now? This was known for years and years.

Hasn't this been known for decades?

I thought we knew about this for a long time? I certainly did lol

There's a better article here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0531135438.htm

Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31's tangential motion. Until now, astronomers have not been able to measure M31's sideways motion in the sky, despite attempts dating back more than a century. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way. "This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the galaxy over a five- to seven-year period," said Jay Anderson of STScI.

Also...

To make matters more complicated, M31's small companion, the Triangulum galaxy, M33, will join in the collision and perhaps later merge with the M31/Milky Way pair. There is a small chance that M33 will hit the Milky Way first.

Who's up for a three-way?

[Seraphinianus]

Not really. The weather is a chaotic system: in principle, there's no way to determine the future state of the system, because we don't ever know the initial state well enough. But to calculate two (albeit very large) objects moving towards each other? Easier. They can probably even approximate it using Newtonian mechanics, let alone General Relativity.

what if newtonian mechanics and general relativity are wrong? what if they suddenly accelerate and blow up tomorrow?

Live every day like it'll be your last! Don't be fooled into complacency by science! The world may end tomorrow, so jump head first into life with reckless abandon!!!

brb, gonna go buy some energy drinks so i can play Diablo 3 all day

[UraMallas]

I read somewhere that earth would survive this event. Is that not true? Even though I think earth will be long gone by the time 4 billion years hits.

As far as I know, that's the case. Because there is so much space in... space, the likelihood of an actual collision with another star is remote. Could happen, though. It's crap shoot, really, because how can you totally be certain about a future 4 billion years from now. I doubt there is any calculation that could reach that far out.

[Emwitus]

How is it even possible to simulate something that catastrophic? We're not even sure how far the effects of the sun stretch in our own solar system so how can we simulate the effects of two galaxys colliding? To be fair tho, relatively, the galaxys are pretty empty(filled with dark matter) so maybe a collision won't be that bad....

[godelsmetric]

How is it even possible to simulate something that catastrophic? We're not even sure how far the effects of the sun stretch in our own solar system so how can we simulate the effects of two galaxys colliding? To be fair tho, relatively, the galaxys are pretty empty(filled with dark matter) so maybe a collision won't be that bad....

As I said before, you can probably approximate it pretty well using good ol' fashioned Newtonian mechanics. Simulating shit using General Relativity is a computational nightmare. They can only just about simulate two perfectly symmetrical black holes colliding, let alone two asymmetrical virtual galaxies (obviously they make simplifying assumptions about their composition etc.)

[Zeitgeister]

It's okay guys, we are almost able to create synthetics, so this cycle is done for anyway.

I'll dance on Bioware's shallow grave, I assure you. And I'll invite friends to the party on the landfill of EA.

edit: about modelling: all models are temporary based on our current ideas or 'understanding' of certain phenomena. You have Kurt Gödel to thank for that bit of knowledge about knowledge. (which unfortunately has been largely ignored during the 20th century, and you would be hard pressed to find university students or fellow gaffers to know about it)

A model is always a theoretical construct, not a direct representation of reality. Our models may all be very, very wrong, and we have no way of knowing that before someone figures that out (and by extension of complexity, a lot of other people as well at the same time). But when we do, we can adjust accordingly and laugh at our faulty predictions. Well, unless the new result is "we're all gonna die! (with 98% confidence). That wouldn't be very funny.

Which is kind of a problem for climate science and some other fields nobody want to hear about, because they just aren't very funny. Maybe the people in those fields should start wearing a lot of make-up, to be a "smile" on their faces. Science: Why so serious?

[dabig2]

How is it even possible to simulate something that catastrophic? We're not even sure how far the effects of the sun stretch in our own solar system so how can we simulate the effects of two galaxys colliding? To be fair tho, relatively, the galaxys are pretty empty(filled with dark matter) so maybe a collision won't be that bad....

A lot of mathematics but also by looking at how other galaxies have collided/are colliding.

[Vigilant Walrus]

and i dont wanna talk a scientist, those fuckers lying and making me pissed - insane clown possee,

track "miracles".

[Escape Goat]

If we slingshot around the sun we can go back and do everything over again. Brand spanking new earth.

[Sappy113]

Eh, Reapers are on a 50.000 year cycle. 4 billion years is nothing to worry about.