Monday, January 05, 2009

Bigger and Badder Than Ever!


The news is that the Milky Way is bigger - if not as big as the Andromeda Galaxy - spinning faster, and we're much more likely to go splat in the deep future with Andromeda.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How would we "splat" against the Andromeda galaxy? Isn't that like light-years away from us?

Will Baird said...

It's 2.5 million (+/-) light years away. From what I understand, the Milky Way and Andromeda are spiraling in towards each other: the combined gravity of thw two galaxies is pulling them together.

It is supposed to be over a billion years from now - for some reason 2.5 billion sticks in my head - and look something like this when it happens.

Oh, and it won't be fast. Think of it like a cosmic train wreck that takes a looooong time (even in geological scales) to happen. The Antenna Galaxies began their crunch 500 million years ago and they're not done.