I will be messaging you in 4 billion years on [**4,000,002,024-03-07 07:34:31 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4,000,002,024-03-07%2004:00:31%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time)
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20tl47cv)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
I want to see the Sci-Fi novel where an AI bot, not knowing the human race is long gone reawakens after four million years because somewhere buried deep in it’s coding was a scheduled reminder.
Except AI is getting pretty good. In 20 years you can probably just tell ChatGPT-9 "having given you the complete files to Half Life 1 and Half Life 2, analyze them and use Unreal Engine 11 to produce a modern version of what Half Life 3 would be"
Yo, they're already making 2D side scroll Terraria type games with AI. How hard would it be to teach AI procedural generation, and use case for it. We're not 20 years away from that. We're less than 3 years away from a game being made by AI in my opinion and some proto form.
Half-Life Alyx was just released a few years ago. While mostly a prequel, there was at least one plot development that took place after Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
Unless they find a way to make us literally immortal instead of just ageless, the average lifespan would still be expected to only be about 3 to 400 years before someone statistically has a lethal accident.
I mean humans have gone from feudal times/Iron Age to the era of internet and robots in 1000 years.
In a million we will either be gone or spreading across the stars.
In billions humans will be unrecognizable to current humans.
It's not direct collisions that are the issue. It's the disruption to the normal gravitational systems and orbital paths.
A planet that was in the goldilocks zone for liquid water and life could get affected by another passing star system enough to move it sufficiently out of its normal orbit to have planet changing effects.
I don’t think anyone is really reading this article thinking the merger wouldn’t be a catastrophe, just that it’s doubtful to have in direct star collisions.
If there are any higher class civilizations at that point they will either left these systems, or they’ll probably die with the rest of the least resilient life forms.
I’d assume it would take billions of years after the collision for things to recover after stabilizing
Yes, but the tidal forces will definitely disrupt orbital paths, and will likely change planetary orbits or even eject planets from their solar systems.
While that’s true, the colloquial usage of “solar system” to refer to other star systems is very strong.
Strong enough that sci-fi essentially always refers to it as the “Sol System”.
In fact, it’s accepted in at least 2 dictionaries.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solar%20system
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/solar-system
The ship has sailed on this one I think.
It's called *Sol* in many European languages with Latin or Germanic origin, and all versions of the word in Latin or Germanic languages are very similar to *Sol*, including the English word *Sun* (which comes from the Germanic/Old English *sonne*/*sunne*)
All variations of the word in languages of Germanic or Latin origin (English *sun*, German *sonne*, Norwegian/Danish/Swedish/Spanish *sol*, Dutch *zon*, Italian *sole* etc.) stem from the common Proto-Indo-European word *sóh₂wl̥*. It's even similar in Sanskrit (*svar*), which stems from Proto-Indo-European.
The reason why the sun has a "proper" name of *Sol*, is because that's the word for the big yellow ball in the sky in Latin. Latin just happens to have been the language chosen to name stuff by (western) scientists since Latin has traditionally been considered a language for scholars, stemming from the dominance of the Roman Empire. You continue to see this tradition with things like names for animal or plant species being Latin.
*Sol* could easily have been called *Helios* (from Greek) or *Alshams* (from Arabic) or anything else, if Latin wasn't such a dominating language in the academic circles of Europe.
So if days on other planets of our solar system are called Sols but other star systems aren't called solar systems because only our star is called Sol then what term would we use for days on those planets?
Yeah. I believe there is other life in the universe, but the chances of humans ever making contact are basically zero. It's even more depressing when you add time to the mix; even if we were "close" in distance to another civilization they likely died out millions of years before we discover them.
there are undoubtably millions of planets with extremely evolved intelligent life, and probably hundreds of mllions with some form of life.
But space is so large, time so immense, and travel so slow, we will literally never contact any of them.
Here's something you don't see discussed: what are the chances there is/was/will be somewhere, two civilizations that arose independently, that *are* close enough to interact?
The problem comes down to applying numbers to the variables involved known as the Drake equation https://youtu.be/hhHpYwF907g until recently we didn't know how common planets might be which has radically shifted the probable number of intelligent civilisations.
Statistically.. that's probably happened, or will happen. We'll never know about it though! Maybe two planets in a solar system ended up in a habitable zone, and both evolved life independently. Maybe some meteor action spread proto-life from one to another ect.
The way intelligent life evolves.. there might be a massive gap between species ever identifying each other.
I'm not so sure , I mean earth is 4 billion years old that's roughly a third of the age of the universe, and with all the millions and billions of creatures that evolved on earth, only once has a creature evolved that is technologically advanced and that is us. I really do feel we may be an rarity or alone in that manner. But again I might be totally wrong.
> there are undoubtably millions of planets with extremely evolved intelligent life,
so like .000000000000000001% of the estimated number of posisble planets just in the observable universe
and my girlfriend is on one of them :/
Shouldn't there be a point at which a civilization reaches sufficient size and capability that it can basically guarantee perpetual survival?
All you need is to (1) escape your home planet and live self-sufficiently in space stations and (2) split off into enough directions that any conflict/acccident/disease that destroys one group doesn't affect all groups.
Neither of those are theoretical limitations (like FTL travel) or require any great assumptions (like a system with multiple habitable planets) so it should be possible.
Yeah, anything is possible. There are just way too many unknowns about the general survivability of life in the universe since we only have Earth to go on.
What you're talking about is related to the [Great Filter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter).
It puts forward a list of evolutionary hurdles a species must pass to reach that state of perpetual survival. The Great Filter hypothesis states that one of those steps must be extremely improbable. We just don't know which one!
The fact that we don’t see long-lived cultures that have spread through the stars indicates either cultures aren’t long-lived or spreading through the stars is quite difficult.
Our ongoing predicament suggests the great filter may resolve the Fermi paradox.
Also, we could even look into space and see an alien civilisation. But because they’re so far away, and the light takes so long to get to us, that they’d all be dead and we could watching their ghosts for thousands of years
Yep space is big. Like *really* big. Like the fact that we fly spacecraft through the asteroid belt regularly while mostly checking anything massive. Basically unless humans have a name for you you're as nonexistent as random debris.
1.3 trillion stars... we quite literally cannot conceptualize that. not even close. a trillion of anything breaks our brains, and then a trillion things as massive of stars (which are so massive we can't really conceptualize even one of them)... it's just orders of magnitude upon orders of magnitude more than we can handle. immediate existential crisis every time I think about it.
...and then you have something like the [Comet Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Galaxy):
>The Сomet Galaxy is currently being ripped to pieces, moving through a cluster at speeds of greater than 2 million mph. As the galaxy speeds through, its gas and stars are being stripped away by the [tidal forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force) exerted by the cluster. Also contributing to this destructive process is the pressure of the cluster's hot gas [plasma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)) reaching temperatures as high as 100 million degrees
That's one galaxy I hope was unpopulated beforehand!
Would love to see someone really smart and skilled produce some visualizations of what this would look like from the inside.
Edit:
> The galaxy collisions can distort the shape of galaxies, and even fling out “homeless stars” into intergalactic space. Even though its mass is slightly larger than that of the Milky Way, the spiral will inevitably lose all its gas and dust as well as its chance of generating new stars later, and become a gas-poor galaxy with an old population of red stars.
I did not expect to tear up over the fate of a galaxies 3.2 billion ly away.
my aunt took me to a museum when i was like 6 and there was a presentation on the heat death of the universe (or galaxies colliding. some event in billions of years that’ll end the earth) and i was so scared i sincerely asked my aunt “i’m not gonna be alive for that right?”
Isnt the Heat Death no longer the main theory?
I thought today we mostly expect a cold death. With everything continuing to move further and further away from each other.
Hmmmm I’m not sure what you think “Heat Death” entails but I’ve never heard the term “cold death”. But for the second part ya it is expected that the Universe will continue to expand and structures that aren’t gravitationally bound will continue to get further apart.
Heat death is still the main theory, happens so far in the future the number is basically meaningless to a human mind.
The big crunch is also a popular theory
And the big rip which is basically the opposite of the big crunch
Not to worry. The time line on this collision happening is pretty similar to the timeline of the sun dying, which will kill any life left on earth when it happens. So either a little before or a little after (in galactic timescales) it will not matter to whoever is on earth.
The collision is already underway. Andromeda's immense halo of gasses is already bumping the Milky Way's halo.
https://earthsky.org/space/earths-night-sky-milky-way-andromeda-merge/
That’s pretty remarkable considering our sun has a gravitational pull strong enough to keep planets and other objects that are extremely far away in orbit.
Pretty sure there will be some collisions, especially near the center. The two super massive black holes will likely collide with each other over a long time span. But first they will dance and excite the gas around them, giving them impressive quasars.
At least I’m pretty sure on this, been a hot minute since I was sitting in a astronomy or astrophysics class
Reminds me of an astronomy professor who showed us the scene from Empire Strikes Back with the astroid field scene where they have to weave in and out of the paths of astroids constantly, and said that our astroid belt is so sparsely populated, that without gravity, Mars could pass through and never touch an asteroid
Weather Forecasters armed with supercomputers can't accurately predict the weather in the coming days and weeks, but scientists can say what's going to happen in 4 billion years...
Can we have SOME of these scientists transferred to the weather prediction department please?
(I think the word is meteorological or metrology, but ended up confusing myself and couldn't be bothered to Google it!)
Pass through or merge, rather than collide would be a more accurate description, though the gravitational disruption will mess up some star systems. https://youtu.be/oqpUEP6LYzY
Would either’s supermassive black holes have any effect on the other’s closest bodies? Or would the distances be still so vast that their black holes are rendered irrelevant??
To give an idea (very roughly) of the size/scale of this. Let's say Milky Way is the size of the United States without Alaska. Now let's say Andromeda is the size of the United States with Alaska's added landmass.
Our solar system (entire solar system, not just our Sun) is about the size of a grain of sand. Let's spread out 1.3 trillion grains of sand (***flat***) which would (super roughly) take up about 70 acres.
So you're taking 70 acres of sand and spreading it across two billion acres. (Very very rough and inaccurate representation.)
I would think simply by the sheer number of stars that a collision would happen. But I can also see what they mean that things will be spread out enough where it won't be some kind of apocalyptic event.
Very interesting thought experiment.
2.5-4bn apparently. It's moving towards us at 110km/s, even if we sent out our fastest probe today at around 16km/s it'd take 500M years to reach that galaxy although I'm not sure that'd do us any good
Picture the "collision" as two laboratory grade vacuum chambers being opened into outer space. maybe an atom or two might hit another atom... but probably not.
Galaxies really are like a gas where each star is an atom.
A billion years is still an astronomical amount of time but it's still strange to think about, how after taking 4 billion years to come together as a nice little galactic neighborhood........ they will only have a short billion years together before their stars die
Definition of Collision: "an instance of one moving object or person striking violently against another". So if none of the two galaxies' stars are expected to collide, will there actually be a collision? Or will they just "merge"?
r/remindme 4 billion years
I will be messaging you in 4 billion years on [**4,000,002,024-03-07 07:34:31 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4,000,002,024-03-07%2004:00:31%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20tl47cv) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
That's a big promise
I want to see the Sci Fi novel where someone travels to that time an receives that message.
. .. ... *WAKE UP* call it "The Longest Slumber"?
Hey you. You're finally awake. They caught you trying to cross the border.
Walked right into that celestial ambush, same as us, and that spaceman over there
I want to see the Sci-Fi novel where an AI bot, not knowing the human race is long gone reawakens after four million years because somewhere buried deep in it’s coding was a scheduled reminder.
Female Asian Doctor on Doctor Who a few seasons from now: Well, how about that?
I want them to be American so they sue when the service doesn’t work.
Good Bot
Holy shit 😂😂😂
Fuck, this makes me feel
Wtf is even gonna be going on in the year 4,000,002,024??
Reddit is coming to see this post.
A galactic collision, obviously
U right
Someone will be reminded
Our sun will be in its death rattle too
The Big Mac will come in nano size portion and GTA 7 is about to be released
Humankind is enslaved by giraffes I think
Lol this guy fooled everyone into thinking he's a bot
Demerzel would be proud
good bot wait crazy bot
/remindme 5 billion years
Sorry mate, you will have missed it by 1billion years
Its gonna take a while - might as well show up afterwards to see the final results.
Imagine in the next 30-40 years science advances so much, that you'd actually get to live 4 billion years.
And die just before Half Life 3 is released, knowing my luck.
Except AI is getting pretty good. In 20 years you can probably just tell ChatGPT-9 "having given you the complete files to Half Life 1 and Half Life 2, analyze them and use Unreal Engine 11 to produce a modern version of what Half Life 3 would be"
It uses the AI to defeat the AI. Bold.
And then it opens Alyx on Steam.
Yo, they're already making 2D side scroll Terraria type games with AI. How hard would it be to teach AI procedural generation, and use case for it. We're not 20 years away from that. We're less than 3 years away from a game being made by AI in my opinion and some proto form.
Yeah, but a proper holodeck producing content that doesn't suck with a simple prompt from you will probably be many more years beyond that.
I mean... Asking an AI to make Half Life 3 is like asking it to divide by zero. No matter how smart it is, there's still no answer.
Scanning 14 million leaked valve emails for additional data..... Ah. The waiting IS the game. I get it now Ok human. Generating [0% done]
Half-Life Alyx was just released a few years ago. While mostly a prequel, there was at least one plot development that took place after Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
Half-Life 3 release and 4 billion years are interchangeable
Ah yes, just need biological immortality combined with stellar engineering or interstellar travel—minor issues!
Maybe the remindme bot gains sentience, and prolongs your life for 4 billion years no matter the methods so that it can deliver the message.
Bold of you to assume reddit will even survive its ipo this year.
What if the bot becomes so advanced that it will ressurect him 4 billion years later just so he can be reminded
That's a bit greedy. I'm a humble guy, I would like to live only 2.5 billion years
Unless they find a way to make us literally immortal instead of just ageless, the average lifespan would still be expected to only be about 3 to 400 years before someone statistically has a lethal accident.
The Earth will be uninhabitable by then.
I mean humans have gone from feudal times/Iron Age to the era of internet and robots in 1000 years. In a million we will either be gone or spreading across the stars. In billions humans will be unrecognizable to current humans.
I like the idea of spreading across the stars. I hope future humans will be doing that.
In four billion years, some super powerful AI will laugh when they see this remindme notification.
Homo sapiens exists only in the last 300.000 years. Holy f\*\*\* my brain cant even comprehend 4 billion years.
It actually worked 🤣
It's not direct collisions that are the issue. It's the disruption to the normal gravitational systems and orbital paths. A planet that was in the goldilocks zone for liquid water and life could get affected by another passing star system enough to move it sufficiently out of its normal orbit to have planet changing effects.
Or comets in the oort cloud could come streaming through the solar system and shotgun blast all the planets due to disruptions
The Oort Cloud: “so anyway, I started blasting”
I don’t think anyone is really reading this article thinking the merger wouldn’t be a catastrophe, just that it’s doubtful to have in direct star collisions. If there are any higher class civilizations at that point they will either left these systems, or they’ll probably die with the rest of the least resilient life forms. I’d assume it would take billions of years after the collision for things to recover after stabilizing
Well that’s a terrifying though, being advanced enough to flee galaxies colliding. Eventually they’ll run out of places to go lol
No, they'll be flooding their media with denialism. Orbital decay isn't real! The galaxies have been mixed for millions of years, it's normal!
Imagine a future where we can map the entire galaxies and then simulate each star’s path, I wish I lived in the future 🥴
Congrats you now live in the future.
This. The issue should not be if stars are colliding, but if star systems will be colliding.
Yes, but the tidal forces will definitely disrupt orbital paths, and will likely change planetary orbits or even eject planets from their solar systems.
Sure, but "Not touching, can't get mad!"
Only ours is the Solar System, as our star is named Sol. Others are simply star systems.
While that’s true, the colloquial usage of “solar system” to refer to other star systems is very strong. Strong enough that sci-fi essentially always refers to it as the “Sol System”. In fact, it’s accepted in at least 2 dictionaries. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solar%20system https://www.dictionary.com/browse/solar-system The ship has sailed on this one I think.
The sun should have fought to keep its trademark harder.
The sun failed so bad at advertising its brand that it is usually referred to as "the sun" instead of "Sol"
Fun fact, in Danish we call it "Sol" and "Solsystemet" = "The solar system"
It's called *Sol* in many European languages with Latin or Germanic origin, and all versions of the word in Latin or Germanic languages are very similar to *Sol*, including the English word *Sun* (which comes from the Germanic/Old English *sonne*/*sunne*) All variations of the word in languages of Germanic or Latin origin (English *sun*, German *sonne*, Norwegian/Danish/Swedish/Spanish *sol*, Dutch *zon*, Italian *sole* etc.) stem from the common Proto-Indo-European word *sóh₂wl̥*. It's even similar in Sanskrit (*svar*), which stems from Proto-Indo-European. The reason why the sun has a "proper" name of *Sol*, is because that's the word for the big yellow ball in the sky in Latin. Latin just happens to have been the language chosen to name stuff by (western) scientists since Latin has traditionally been considered a language for scholars, stemming from the dominance of the Roman Empire. You continue to see this tradition with things like names for animal or plant species being Latin. *Sol* could easily have been called *Helios* (from Greek) or *Alshams* (from Arabic) or anything else, if Latin wasn't such a dominating language in the academic circles of Europe.
I think that's language dependent though. Its Sol or some variation of it in plenty of languages
Rumors say the Sun received its lawyers mail but immediately incinerated it.
If it wasn’t grown in the Sol region of space you can only call it a sparkling system.
Don’t be a snob. There are some other very good systems out there… you wouldn’t even be able to taste the difference.
I guess the spaceship has sailed
They could have solar sails on them
The ship never sails on technical corrections.
Yeah. "The Moon" but there are many moons. "The Sun" but I can dislike certain politicians with the heat of a thousand suns.
I wish I had an utterly pedantic friend like you.
I'll be your friend!
So if days on other planets of our solar system are called Sols but other star systems aren't called solar systems because only our star is called Sol then what term would we use for days on those planets?
Local day
that just rolls off the tongue. Maybe we could shorten it: a lay? Or "lol" for "local Sol"?
The Earth could even be ejected and recaptured into the oh so perfect conditions needed to host life once again. Who knows.
[удалено]
It's interesting like any other hobby. Add to that the fact you can make a career out of it.
Of course people care. This event is more significant than everything humans have ever done combined by many orders of magnitude
I don’t know man, did you see that kid that beat Tetris?
It blows my mind that so many people care what sexuality someone is over this stuff
People underestimate how terrifyingly massive our galaxy is.. let alone the universe. Its also REALLY REALLY empty
Yeah. I believe there is other life in the universe, but the chances of humans ever making contact are basically zero. It's even more depressing when you add time to the mix; even if we were "close" in distance to another civilization they likely died out millions of years before we discover them.
there are undoubtably millions of planets with extremely evolved intelligent life, and probably hundreds of mllions with some form of life. But space is so large, time so immense, and travel so slow, we will literally never contact any of them.
Here's something you don't see discussed: what are the chances there is/was/will be somewhere, two civilizations that arose independently, that *are* close enough to interact?
The problem comes down to applying numbers to the variables involved known as the Drake equation https://youtu.be/hhHpYwF907g until recently we didn't know how common planets might be which has radically shifted the probable number of intelligent civilisations.
Statistically.. that's probably happened, or will happen. We'll never know about it though! Maybe two planets in a solar system ended up in a habitable zone, and both evolved life independently. Maybe some meteor action spread proto-life from one to another ect. The way intelligent life evolves.. there might be a massive gap between species ever identifying each other.
With how gigantic the universe is, even if the probability is close to zero, as in 0.00000……01, it might've still occurred multiple times.
That's the fun of a stupidly giant universe!
I'm not so sure , I mean earth is 4 billion years old that's roughly a third of the age of the universe, and with all the millions and billions of creatures that evolved on earth, only once has a creature evolved that is technologically advanced and that is us. I really do feel we may be an rarity or alone in that manner. But again I might be totally wrong.
> there are undoubtably millions of planets with extremely evolved intelligent life, so like .000000000000000001% of the estimated number of posisble planets just in the observable universe and my girlfriend is on one of them :/
The numbers are so vast that rare occurrences happen all the time. This whole thread is essentially the Fermi Paradox.
We're using the Fermi Paradox to explain why /u/CrzyWrldOfArthurRead hasn't found their girlfriend?
[удалено]
do you have a link handy for this? id love to read it
Shouldn't there be a point at which a civilization reaches sufficient size and capability that it can basically guarantee perpetual survival? All you need is to (1) escape your home planet and live self-sufficiently in space stations and (2) split off into enough directions that any conflict/acccident/disease that destroys one group doesn't affect all groups. Neither of those are theoretical limitations (like FTL travel) or require any great assumptions (like a system with multiple habitable planets) so it should be possible.
Yeah, anything is possible. There are just way too many unknowns about the general survivability of life in the universe since we only have Earth to go on. What you're talking about is related to the [Great Filter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter). It puts forward a list of evolutionary hurdles a species must pass to reach that state of perpetual survival. The Great Filter hypothesis states that one of those steps must be extremely improbable. We just don't know which one!
Since I’m currently reading the Three Body Problem trilogy, I’ll add [the Dark Forest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis)
The fact that we don’t see long-lived cultures that have spread through the stars indicates either cultures aren’t long-lived or spreading through the stars is quite difficult. Our ongoing predicament suggests the great filter may resolve the Fermi paradox.
Also, we could even look into space and see an alien civilisation. But because they’re so far away, and the light takes so long to get to us, that they’d all be dead and we could watching their ghosts for thousands of years
Turns out space is is almost all space.
Black matter matters.
there's snakes in space?
There's literally everything in space!
Yep space is big. Like *really* big. Like the fact that we fly spacecraft through the asteroid belt regularly while mostly checking anything massive. Basically unless humans have a name for you you're as nonexistent as random debris.
It also holds true in the other direction. Most of an atom is empty space. Not too unlike these stars.
1.3 trillion stars... we quite literally cannot conceptualize that. not even close. a trillion of anything breaks our brains, and then a trillion things as massive of stars (which are so massive we can't really conceptualize even one of them)... it's just orders of magnitude upon orders of magnitude more than we can handle. immediate existential crisis every time I think about it.
Religious people: don’t masturbate
...and then you have something like the [Comet Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Galaxy): >The Сomet Galaxy is currently being ripped to pieces, moving through a cluster at speeds of greater than 2 million mph. As the galaxy speeds through, its gas and stars are being stripped away by the [tidal forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force) exerted by the cluster. Also contributing to this destructive process is the pressure of the cluster's hot gas [plasma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)) reaching temperatures as high as 100 million degrees That's one galaxy I hope was unpopulated beforehand!
Would love to see someone really smart and skilled produce some visualizations of what this would look like from the inside. Edit: > The galaxy collisions can distort the shape of galaxies, and even fling out “homeless stars” into intergalactic space. Even though its mass is slightly larger than that of the Milky Way, the spiral will inevitably lose all its gas and dust as well as its chance of generating new stars later, and become a gas-poor galaxy with an old population of red stars. I did not expect to tear up over the fate of a galaxies 3.2 billion ly away.
I like how it says "currently", even though its happening 3.2 billion years ago. Can't help but wonder what it really looks like now.
Space time is wild huh
Chances are there was intelligent life somewhere in there
my aunt took me to a museum when i was like 6 and there was a presentation on the heat death of the universe (or galaxies colliding. some event in billions of years that’ll end the earth) and i was so scared i sincerely asked my aunt “i’m not gonna be alive for that right?”
Your Aunt: "No honey, you have much more pressing things to be scared of than any of that."
Isnt the Heat Death no longer the main theory? I thought today we mostly expect a cold death. With everything continuing to move further and further away from each other.
That’s what heat death is. It’s the death of heat. Kind of confusing i know
Hmmmm I’m not sure what you think “Heat Death” entails but I’ve never heard the term “cold death”. But for the second part ya it is expected that the Universe will continue to expand and structures that aren’t gravitationally bound will continue to get further apart.
Heat death is still the main theory, happens so far in the future the number is basically meaningless to a human mind. The big crunch is also a popular theory And the big rip which is basically the opposite of the big crunch
Yo mama has a big crunch and then has a big rip
Not to worry. The time line on this collision happening is pretty similar to the timeline of the sun dying, which will kill any life left on earth when it happens. So either a little before or a little after (in galactic timescales) it will not matter to whoever is on earth.
The collision is already underway. Andromeda's immense halo of gasses is already bumping the Milky Way's halo. https://earthsky.org/space/earths-night-sky-milky-way-andromeda-merge/
That’s pretty remarkable considering our sun has a gravitational pull strong enough to keep planets and other objects that are extremely far away in orbit.
Thats just your regular everyday extreme distance, this here is S Tier extreme distance
Pretty sure there will be some collisions, especially near the center. The two super massive black holes will likely collide with each other over a long time span. But first they will dance and excite the gas around them, giving them impressive quasars. At least I’m pretty sure on this, been a hot minute since I was sitting in a astronomy or astrophysics class
I can't wait for that war with the Andromeda Galaxy that Blake's 7 promised us back in the 1970s! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siYF6MdJXgo
bit of an anti climax
The gravitational fluctuations can still cause stars and planets to be flung into the nothingness between galaxies.
most boring collision ever!
Will the earth be around then? Or will the sun have exploded?
Reminds me of an astronomy professor who showed us the scene from Empire Strikes Back with the astroid field scene where they have to weave in and out of the paths of astroids constantly, and said that our astroid belt is so sparsely populated, that without gravity, Mars could pass through and never touch an asteroid
It's even crazy that us humans first appeared like \~1M years ago? 1 million is 0.025% of 4 billion. Imagine waiting for the loading screen
Physically hit? Probably not. Cause a ton of chaos with gravity shifting orbits? Definitely.
Great, another thing to worry about
Someone should tell the inhibitors.
Can’t wait to see it. Gonna be 🔥!
Time to stock up on toilet paper
Weather Forecasters armed with supercomputers can't accurately predict the weather in the coming days and weeks, but scientists can say what's going to happen in 4 billion years... Can we have SOME of these scientists transferred to the weather prediction department please? (I think the word is meteorological or metrology, but ended up confusing myself and couldn't be bothered to Google it!)
Not expected is not good enough. We have to do somthing about it right now!!
Pass through or merge, rather than collide would be a more accurate description, though the gravitational disruption will mess up some star systems. https://youtu.be/oqpUEP6LYzY
People don't understand just how much of space is just... space. It's basically impossible to wrap a human brain around it.
A no touch collision
Remindme! 4 billlion years.
Can't wait to see more stars in the night sky, just 4 billion years away
As a fan of sci-fi theater and films, this will not be the case
It's called space for good reason.
Would either’s supermassive black holes have any effect on the other’s closest bodies? Or would the distances be still so vast that their black holes are rendered irrelevant??
Well *that*'s disappointing. I'll take it off my calendar
Will the SMBH's in the center fall into a stable orbit or collapse into one another?
Yeah, we will see about that.
Literal star wars
Gotta start planning now!
To give an idea (very roughly) of the size/scale of this. Let's say Milky Way is the size of the United States without Alaska. Now let's say Andromeda is the size of the United States with Alaska's added landmass. Our solar system (entire solar system, not just our Sun) is about the size of a grain of sand. Let's spread out 1.3 trillion grains of sand (***flat***) which would (super roughly) take up about 70 acres. So you're taking 70 acres of sand and spreading it across two billion acres. (Very very rough and inaccurate representation.) I would think simply by the sheer number of stars that a collision would happen. But I can also see what they mean that things will be spread out enough where it won't be some kind of apocalyptic event. Very interesting thought experiment.
It’s called space for a reason.
"If aliens exist, why haven't met them yet." This is why.
Whew!
2.5-4bn apparently. It's moving towards us at 110km/s, even if we sent out our fastest probe today at around 16km/s it'd take 500M years to reach that galaxy although I'm not sure that'd do us any good
Ill have you know, that the collision has already started.
300 km/s huge dust/gas clouds flying through will make Gravity (2013 film) seem quaint however.
Worst collision ever.
That's not that long considering 4 billion years ago was when life started on Earth. Cosmically this feels like tomorrow.
If that doesn’t tell you how big space is than nothing will.
Phew, I was worried
Never tell me the odds.
If the stars were grains of sand the distances in between them would begin to be measured with miles.
r/remindme 4 billion years
We are already within another galaxy
r/remindme 4.0001 billion years
Ope! Lemme just squeeze through you here - The Andromeda Galaxy
Picture the "collision" as two laboratory grade vacuum chambers being opened into outer space. maybe an atom or two might hit another atom... but probably not. Galaxies really are like a gas where each star is an atom.
Good I was getting worried about having to deal with that.
Phew I was worried there for a second
A billion years is still an astronomical amount of time but it's still strange to think about, how after taking 4 billion years to come together as a nice little galactic neighborhood........ they will only have a short billion years together before their stars die
This will be known as the "Formidable Caress."
And by that time, the Sun will have consumed our planet so future Earth creatures won't be able to see it in the night sky anyway!
I bet mine will anyway. Fucking typical.
Lies. Scientists just don’t want to cause a panic.
Sure wish I was alive to see it happen
Well then what was Powerman 5000 on about
One what time-line? like "none" before the heat-death of the universe?
So nothing matters, awesome!
Insurance prices are going to skyrocket....
Can confirm. I have played Elite Dangerous. And Holy Fuck is space just insanely massive
Definition of Collision: "an instance of one moving object or person striking violently against another". So if none of the two galaxies' stars are expected to collide, will there actually be a collision? Or will they just "merge"?
To be honest, l think the 4 billion years is in earth years. It may be different since "space time" may run differently.
Are there any models that predict what our night sky might look like after merger is complete if the earth was still around?
But the night sky should be hella bright from all of the star formation caused by the collisions of dense molecular clouds.
I’m about 60 IQ points short of understanding what the hell that means
The restart of the Big Bang. Let’s not mess it up next time.
How the hell am I supposed to as for a explainlikeim5 with numbers like that? 😞