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This is how the world will end

Posted at 3:11 PM on May 30, 2012 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Science

One thing about the NASA public relations department: it doesn't overplay events.

On Thursday, May 31, at 3:00 p.m. EDT NASA will host an informal discussion for the general public with astronomers about new Hubble Space Telescope observations that allow them to predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our entire galaxy, sun, and solar system.

By "next major cosmic event," they're talking about the end of the world. Many worlds, actually.

Using data from the Hubble space telescope, scientists apparently have determined the answer to the long standing question about whether the Andromeda galaxy will have a head-on collision with the Milky Way.

Bad news: The answer is "yes."

It will happen billions of years from now but when it does, it will look something like this:

It will be an amazingly beautiful result, even if all life as we know it will be over.

(Visualization By : Frank Summers, Space Telescope Science Institute)

Comments (8)

Of course, by the time this happens the all life on earth will be wiped out due to the sun's transition to a red giant in some 1.5 billion years. So it won't really matter to us.

Posted by andrea hanson | May 30, 2012 4:33 PM

Well, hell, I'm buying an SUV!

Posted by Kevin Watterson | May 30, 2012 4:51 PM

andrea - "So it won't really matter to us."
No, but it sure will ANTI-matter! ( Sorry.)

And "Predict with certainty"? I would like to see the dictionary that NASA uses: CERTAINTY(noun) - a precise measurement of time (+/- 3 billion years).

Posted by Jim Shapiro | May 30, 2012 5:45 PM

No problem. By that time we will have discovered warp drive. We can just move to another galaxy and watch it from there. Problem Solved.

Posted by John P. | May 30, 2012 11:24 PM

What a crap article. Galaxies merge, they don't actually collide. Stars and planets don't crash into each other, because they are spaced so far apart. The merging process takes billions of years. Any life forms existing in the two galaxies probably wouldn't be affected in the least.

Posted by Graham | May 31, 2012 7:29 PM

This is utter nonsense.

Apart from the fact that all life on Earth will be gone by then, they actually say there's very little chance of stars colliding.

Posted by Mr Mark | June 1, 2012 8:10 AM

OK, science geeks, I've made a note. No more humor.

Posted by Bob Collins | June 1, 2012 9:59 AM

Hammer + Nail = Complete, well done Bob.

Posted by Joe | June 1, 2012 11:07 AM