Galactic Merger To 'Evict' Sun and Earth!

The Milky Way and the giant Andromeda galaxies are currently rushing towards each other on a collision course at about 120 kilometres per second. Computer simulations of this collision, were done using 2.6 million particles to model the matter in both galaxies and in intergalactic space. Also accounted for was the unidentified invisible "dark matter" known to exist in space as well as the ordinary matter in stars and clouds of gas.

It's hard to know where you'll be in five years' time, never mind 5 billion. But astronomers have it all figured out. In 5 billion years, they say, the Sun and Earth – along with our atomic remains and any living Earthlings – will inhabit "Milkomeda", the wreckage of a violent collision between the Milky Way and the giant Andromeda galaxy.

The results suggest that the Sun will lie much deeper in galactic suburbia than it does today, with a 67% chance of being more than 65,000 light years from Milkomeda's centre. However, there is also a remote 3% chance that the Sun will jump ship and defect to the Andromeda galaxy during the second close passage.

Cheers!

P.S. Do they serve beer in the Andromeda Galaxy?

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[edit on 15-5-2007 by mikesingh]

I'd be worried it I tough humankind could survive that long. Come on folks, we only have 5 billion years to get out of this galaxy!! Pretty interesting stuff tough.

They're forgetting something: in 5 billion years, its unlikely that the Earth will even exist. The sun will be a red giant class star, quite likely engulfing the Earth in the process, or, at the very least, raising the surface temperature several hundred degrees.

The Earth will likely be uninhabitable sometime in the next 1 billion years for similar reasons. The amount of heat that reaches us from the sun is slowly increasing, and over the next several hundred million years the Earth will no longer be in the habitable zone of our solar system.

thats gravity...so what else is new?

Minor point of contention-

Originally posted by mikesingh
Also accounted for was the unidentified invisible "dark matter" known to exist in space as well as the ordinary matter in stars and clouds of gas.

Dark matter is theorized to exist. It isn't known to exist, but its presence is inferred. In other words, to make other stuff fit what we think might be going on, we have to assume the existence of yet other stuff which we can't identify. But it's probably there. We think. Maybe.

Other than that, 5 billion years eh? Yet they still can't tell me what the weather will be this weekend.

Originally posted by mikesingh
The Milky Way and the giant Andromeda galaxies are currently rushing towards each other

Nice find Mike!

In fact Andromeda and Milky Way, are both being pulled toward supercluster - where the Virgo cluster of galaxies is the largest ( enormous mass). It is some 50 mil light years from us.

Astronomers were doing some simulation - and they say that in distant future, when Andromeda and Milky Way merged together - will be the only one massive galaxy on our event horizon - and that the other galaxies, which are not gravitationally bound - will slip away from us and than from horizon, because of accelerated expansion of the Universe.



Andromeda is so huge galaxy (300 billion stars) - that few smaller galaxies orbit around Andromeda, like satellite.

Two of these elliptical satellites can be seen with a small telescope.

source

Andromada is easy to see with binoculars.
stunning in a ten inch telescope.
Its off of cassiopia, the big W
cheers

You might want to read up on dark matter again.
www.nasa.gov...

I knew that dark matter and dark energy are real but thanks for the link.
I see that dark matter does not interact with itself or our "matter" except in gravity. We know that much and thats about it. Its a gravity glue for the intergalatic gas and the galxaies...while dark energy seems to be pushing apart.

Originally posted by DuncanIdahoGholem
You might want to read up on dark matter again.

Thanks for the link, but I still don't think it's resolved. For another perspective, peruse this one-

The real story of how we ended up with "dark matter".

Just another view.

Welcome to the Cosmic Neighborhood indeed, interesting on the push and pull effects of gravitational/electromagnetically charged fields have.Nothing more than magnets on a larger scale model.