[keep_talking]

Studies show the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way. Estimations are that in about 3-5 billion years, the galaxies will intertwine, and completely destroy each other. This does not bode well for humanity.
Hell, its been said that we have front row seats to our own destruction. Personally, I would give almost anything to witness this first hand, but its just not going to happen, and personally, I don't want to live that long.
I have also read that in fact, the combining of the galaxies will go un-noticed due to the vast distances contained within the galaxies. Stars and planets will not collide, merely pass by eachother unharmed. Mumbo jumbo? You decide.

That being said, there has been a lot of talking about our physical limits to how far we can go and see into space. Our current technology simply does not allow us to traverse over such long distances. We would need an almost endless supply of fuel, food, water, and air to sustain us over such a long period of space travel. The amount of money and time that would have to be dedicated is completely mind boggling. Entire lifetimes would be spent travelling through the nothingness of space just to reach the point of glimpsing our destination.

BUT...

Since the Andromeda Galaxy is predicted to collide with us eventually (assuming the sun's red giant phase does not kill us all first), would it not be logical to look at the idea of say...leaving a bit early..say half a million years before that happens? I don't necessarily recall who it was, but they gave good evidence that at some point in time FAR into the future, we could theoretically look up at the sky and see the Andromeda Galaxy engulfing our skies.

Think of it this way...(theoretically speaking of course) the Andromeda is on its way here. The distance is massive, but suppose we leave at the right time and meet it half way? A third of the way? Cut out half of our travel time? Is this possibly our best chance of surviving outside the womb of our mother Earth?

Why not let the universe do the work for us? Its bringing us another galaxy to explore, and its already on its way here. The gap between our home and the Andromeda Galaxy is closing and the window of opportunity is there. 3 billion years from now, assuming humanity is still here, whats keeping us from leaving our mother, and seeking out another home? If humans plan on surviving and retaining the knowledge we have aquired so far there is no other choice. We must leave.

Maybe not right now, but eventually.

I am by no means a scientist, or an expert in the workings of our universe. However, I feel this is in fact a really good question that should be asked. I dont see a pile of suggestions for our ultimate survival on the table, and as far as I know, this is an original thought.

Sorry for the length of the post.

[CaptainPanic]

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

Studies show the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way. Estimations are that in about 3-5 billion years, the galaxies will intertwine, and completely destroy each other. This does not bode well for humanity.

If you see humanity as a species that is stuck on its little planet (also still in 3-5 billion years), we have other problems too. By that time, our sun will be running out of hydrogen, and will start to turn into a red giant.

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

Hell, its been said that we have front row seats to our own destruction. Personally, I would give almost anything to witness this first hand, but its just not going to happen, and personally, I don't want to live that long.

It's a process that would take millions of years:
Gee, let's see what happened yesterday. Oh, it's just another day of apocalypse. Again.

When the apocalypse happens every day for a million years, I bet it gets pretty boring.

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

I have also read that in fact, the combining of the galaxies will go un-noticed due to the vast distances contained within the galaxies. Stars and planets will not collide, merely pass by eachother unharmed. Mumbo jumbo? You decide.

Our closest neighbor, the Centauri system, contains 3 stars at 4 lightyears. That hardly influences us. I don't think that if the number of stars would double, it would be a disaster. Obviously, if we'd be so unlucky that one comes really close, we're toast.

The greatest danger is (I think) that we would be pulled out of our stable orbit around the sun.

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

That being said, there has been a lot of talking about our physical limits to how far we can go and see into space. Our current technology simply does not allow us to traverse over such long distances. We would need an almost endless supply of fuel, food, water, and air to sustain us over such a long period of space travel. The amount of money and time that would have to be dedicated is completely mind boggling. Entire lifetimes would be spent travelling through the nothingness of space just to reach the point of glimpsing our destination.

Galactic movement and human life times are not in the same scale, and shouldn't be used together when you're writing up some plans to save humanity.

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

BUT...

Since the Andromeda Galaxy is predicted to collide with us eventually (assuming the sun's red giant phase does not kill us all first), would it not be logical to look at the idea of say...leaving a bit early..say half a million years before that happens? I don't necessarily recall who it was, but they gave good evidence that at some point in time FAR into the future, we could theoretically look up at the sky and see the Andromeda Galaxy engulfing our skies.

Think of it this way...(theoretically speaking of course) the Andromeda is on its way here. The distance is massive, but suppose we leave at the right time and meet it half way? A third of the way? Cut out half of our travel time? Is this possibly our best chance of surviving outside the womb of our mother Earth?

Why not let the universe do the work for us? Its bringing us another galaxy to explore, and its already on its way here. The gap between our home and the Andromeda Galaxy is closing and the window of opportunity is there. 3 billion years from now, assuming humanity is still here, whats keeping us from leaving our mother, and seeking out another home? If humans plan on surviving and retaining the knowledge we have aquired so far there is no other choice. We must leave.

Maybe not right now, but eventually.

I am by no means a scientist, or an expert in the workings of our universe. However, I feel this is in fact a really good question that should be asked. I dont see a pile of suggestions for our ultimate survival on the table, and as far as I know, this is an original thought.

Sorry for the length of the post.

It sounds like you are suggesting that we are on a train that is gonna hit another train head on, and the smart thing to do is to jump onto the other train just before the collision?

Why would we want to move in that way? I'd try to escape away from the biggest trouble.

[keep_talking]

CaptainPanic, on 9 January 2012 - 01:17 PM, said:

If you see humanity as a species that is stuck on its little planet (also still in 3-5 billion years), we have other problems too. By that time, our sun will be running out of hydrogen, and will start to turn into a red giant.

It's a process that would take millions of years:
Gee, let's see what happened yesterday. Oh, it's just another day of apocalypse. Again.

When the apocalypse happens every day for a million years, I bet it gets pretty boring.


Our closest neighbor, the Centauri system, contains 3 stars at 4 lightyears. That hardly influences us. I don't think that if the number of stars would double, it would be a disaster. Obviously, if we'd be so unlucky that one comes really close, we're toast.

The greatest danger is (I think) that we would be pulled out of our stable orbit around the sun.

Galactic movement and human life times are not in the same scale, and shouldn't be used together when you're writing up some plans to save humanity.


It sounds like you are suggesting that we are on a train that is gonna hit another train head on, and the smart thing to do is to jump onto the other train just before the collision?

Why would we want to move in that way? I'd try to escape away from the biggest trouble.

So your going to escape where? Your going to travel millions of lightyears to avoid a celestial collision? Why not visit another galaxy before we kick the bucket? Wheres your sense of adventure? No, no screw it we just sit here and watch it happen. Im glad NASA did not have the same ideas about the moon.
Jumping on that train seems a pretty good idea considering the alternative. I clearly stated a few problems with human movement through the cosmos. I also clearly stated that the red giant phase of our own sun would probably do us in before we get anywhere near Andromeda.
Did you even read the post?

[CaptainPanic]

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

So your going to escape where? Your going to travel millions of lightyears to avoid a celestial collision? Why not visit another galaxy before we kick the bucket? Wheres your sense of adventure? No, no screw it we just sit here and watch it happen. Im glad NASA did not have the same ideas about the moon.
Jumping on that train seems a pretty good idea considering the alternative. I clearly stated a few problems with human movement through the cosmos. I also clearly stated that the red giant phase of our own sun would probably do us in before we get anywhere near Andromeda.
Did you even read the post?

Hey, what's with the tone? I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings because I wrote about the red giant phase of our sun after you wrote it too... You get all the credits, don't worry. I even quoted you a little later. But in the future, I will make sure to never make this horrible mistake agian.

Using the train metaphor again: if you can run fast enough, and jump off the train on the other end before it crashes, then there's no problem.

It's quite likely that humanity would explore everything - it's in our nature.

But if you take all of humanity and put us all into a giant spaceship to save us, then you head straight for the final destination with that, and you don't use that for exploration.

[Greg Boyles]

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

Studies show the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way. Estimations are that in about 3-5 billion years, the galaxies will intertwine, and completely destroy each other. This does not bode well for humanity.
Hell, its been said that we have front row seats to our own destruction. Personally, I would give almost anything to witness this first hand, but its just not going to happen, and personally, I don't want to live that long.
I have also read that in fact, the combining of the galaxies will go un-noticed due to the vast distances contained within the galaxies. Stars and planets will not collide, merely pass by eachother unharmed. Mumbo jumbo? You decide.

That being said, there has been a lot of talking about our physical limits to how far we can go and see into space. Our current technology simply does not allow us to traverse over such long distances. We would need an almost endless supply of fuel, food, water, and air to sustain us over such a long period of space travel. The amount of money and time that would have to be dedicated is completely mind boggling. Entire lifetimes would be spent travelling through the nothingness of space just to reach the point of glimpsing our destination.

BUT...

Since the Andromeda Galaxy is predicted to collide with us eventually (assuming the sun's red giant phase does not kill us all first), would it not be logical to look at the idea of say...leaving a bit early..say half a million years before that happens? I don't necessarily recall who it was, but they gave good evidence that at some point in time FAR into the future, we could theoretically look up at the sky and see the Andromeda Galaxy engulfing our skies.

Think of it this way...(theoretically speaking of course) the Andromeda is on its way here. The distance is massive, but suppose we leave at the right time and meet it half way? A third of the way? Cut out half of our travel time? Is this possibly our best chance of surviving outside the womb of our mother Earth?

Why not let the universe do the work for us? Its bringing us another galaxy to explore, and its already on its way here. The gap between our home and the Andromeda Galaxy is closing and the window of opportunity is there. 3 billion years from now, assuming humanity is still here, whats keeping us from leaving our mother, and seeking out another home? If humans plan on surviving and retaining the knowledge we have aquired so far there is no other choice. We must leave.

Maybe not right now, but eventually.

I am by no means a scientist, or an expert in the workings of our universe. However, I feel this is in fact a really good question that should be asked. I dont see a pile of suggestions for our ultimate survival on the table, and as far as I know, this is an original thought.

Sorry for the length of the post.

In his series "Cosmos" Carl Sagan described the collision of galaxies as being like bullets passing through a swarm of bees. Interstellardistances are so vast that collisions between stars would be rare events in galactic collisions.

[kepler94]

Greg Boyles, on 9 January 2012 - 02:05 PM, said:

In his series "Cosmos" Carl Sagan described the collision of galaxies as being like bullets passing through a swarm of bees. Interstellardistances are so vast that collisions between stars would be rare events in galactic collisions.

Wouldn't all of the mass of both galaxies just come together and have extremely strong force of gravity and like...collapse in on itself? Almost like a black hole? But at the same time, what about the redshift of that we see of stars and galaxies, how are we going to collide if we are spreading out...?

It seems like the Andromeda collision and expansion of the universe contradict each other. Unless I'm missing something here (which I probably am).

[StringJunky]

kepler94, on 16 January 2012 - 06:48 AM, said:

It seems like the Andromeda collision and expansion of the universe contradict each other. Unless I'm missing something here (which I probably am).

Andromeda and The Milky Way are part of the Local Group of galaxies and therefore not subject to the Hubble expansion because they are too strongly gravitationally bound to each other for it to have an effect.

[michel123456]

StringJunky, on 16 January 2012 - 07:09 AM, said:

Andromeda and The Milky Way are part of the Local Group of galaxies and therefore not subject to the Hubble expansion because they are too strongly gravitationally bound to each other for it to have an effect.

If they are gravitationaly bounded, doesn't that mean that they would orbit each other instead of colliding?

[CaptainPanic]

kepler94, on 16 January 2012 - 06:48 AM, said:

It seems like the Andromeda collision and expansion of the universe contradict each other. Unless I'm missing something here (which I probably am).

I think you should see this galactic crash it as local turbulence.

If the wind blows with 10 m/s, the net effect is that air moves in one direction. However, individual molecules move around at hundreds of m/s, and might very well be moving against the wind. Also, locally inside a wind gust, several m3 of air might just go the other way too. Turbulence creates vortices on all kinds of scales too.

So, summed up, indivivual molecules might move in any direction. Small eddies might move clusters of molecules or small volumes in any direction, and larger bulks of air can also move in any direction. But the average is the direction of the wind.

On an intergalactic scale, the atoms would be stars. Small eddies would perhaps be local clusters of hundreds/thousands of stars. They experience a form of randomness, although luckily they do not bounce into each other every fraction of a second, like air molecules. And entire galaxies can still move against the net flow. But on an even bigger scale, there is a definite expansion. You just need to look at the right scale, and that scale is big. Very big.

[michel123456]

CaptainPanic, on 16 January 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

I think you should see this galactic crash it as local turbulence.

If the wind blows with 10 m/s, the net effect is that air moves in one direction. However, individual molecules move around at hundreds of m/s, and might very well be moving against the wind. Also, locally inside a wind gust, several m3 of air might just go the other way too. Turbulence creates vortices on all kinds of scales too.

So, summed up, indivivual molecules might move in any direction. Small eddies might move clusters of molecules or small volumes in any direction, and larger bulks of air can also move in any direction. But the average is the direction of the wind.

On an intergalactic scale, the atoms would be stars. Small eddies would perhaps be local clusters of hundreds/thousands of stars. They experience a form of randomness, although luckily they do not bounce into each other every fraction of a second, like air molecules. And entire galaxies can still move against the net flow. But on an even bigger scale, there is a definite expansion. You just need to look at the right scale, and that scale is big. Very big.

This is not a description of celestial motion, it is a description of chaotic turbulence. It would be a peculiar example where the small (the solar system) is more regular than the large. Usually, the larger view may show some regularity.

This post has been edited by michel123456: 16 January 2012 - 10:34 AM

[CaptainPanic]

michel123456, on 16 January 2012 - 10:30 AM, said:

This is not a description of celestial motion, it is a description of chaotic turbulence. It would be a peculiar example where the small (the solar system) is more regular than the large. Usually, the larger view may show some regularity.

I know it's not a perfect analogy. A big difference is that the galaxy is held together in a spiral motion by its own gravity, and a local turbulence in a wind gust will instead dissipate quickly rather than converge or continuously rotate.

Still, orbitals of electrons are more regular than the motion of molecules... so if you search for a way to continue the (only approximate, and probably erroneous) analogy, that could be it.

[edited to fix typos]

This post has been edited by CaptainPanic: 16 January 2012 - 11:47 AM

[The north face]

keep_talking, on 9 January 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

Studies show the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way. Estimations are that in about 3-5 billion years, the galaxies will intertwine, and completely destroy each other. This does not bode well for humanity.
Hell, its been said that we have front row seats to our own destruction. Personally, I would give almost anything to witness this first hand, but its just not going to happen, and personally, I don't want to live that long.
I have also read that in fact, the combining of the galaxies will go un-noticed due to the vast distances contained within the galaxies. Stars and planets will not collide, merely pass by eachother unharmed. Mumbo jumbo? You decide.

That being said, there has been a lot of talking about our physical limits to how far we can go and see into space. Our current technology simply does not allow us to traverse over such long distances. We would need an almost endless supply of fuel, food, water, and air to sustain us over such a long period of space travel. The amount of money and time that would have to be dedicated is completely mind boggling. Entire lifetimes would be spent travelling through the nothingness of space just to reach the point of glimpsing our destination.

BUT...

Since the Andromeda Galaxy is predicted to collide with us eventually (assuming the sun's red giant phase does not kill us all first), would it not be logical to look at the idea of say...leaving a bit early..say half a million years before that happens? I don't necessarily recall who it was, but they gave good evidence that at some point in time FAR into the future, we could theoretically look up at the sky and see the Andromeda Galaxy engulfing our skies.

Think of it this way...(theoretically speaking of course) the Andromeda is on its way here. The distance is massive, but suppose we leave at the right time and meet it half way? A third of the way? Cut out half of our travel time? Is this possibly our best chance of surviving outside the womb of our mother Earth?

Why not let the universe do the work for us? Its bringing us another galaxy to explore, and its already on its way here. The gap between our home and the Andromeda Galaxy is closing and the window of opportunity is there. 3 billion years from now, assuming humanity is still here, whats keeping us from leaving our mother, and seeking out another home? If humans plan on surviving and retaining the knowledge we have aquired so far there is no other choice. We must leave.

Maybe not right now, but eventually.

I am by no means a scientist, or an expert in the workings of our universe. However, I feel this is in fact a really good question that should be asked. I dont see a pile of suggestions for our ultimate survival on the table, and as far as I know, this is an original thought.

Sorry for the length of the post.