if this is true, what are we going to do?
oh my gosh I'm worried...
(and i don't know why there is a question mark on the question...)
2007-06-05 16:29:36 · 24 answers · asked by double ouch87 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
here ill add some more detail...
some smart guys in our classroom said that the galaxy is going about 10 light year a sec(i know i was like wth?(the H is heck)).And i saw something on yahoo saying something about the andromeda galaxy and the milky way on a collision course, so i got worried.
2007-06-05 16:43:07 · update #1
The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is two and a half million light years away.
Given nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, how exactly is the Andromeda Galaxy going to get here in just 5 years? i.e, travel at half a million light years per year?
So get out your "Don't Panic!" towel. The Andromeda Galaxy will take billions of years to get here. By when of course our Sun may well already have become a Red Giant and life on earth would then be impossible.
2007-06-05 17:09:57 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
OMG. You really should do some research before you panic over what someone who doesn't know what the heck they're talking about says.
10 light years per second - are you kidding? Light is the fastest thing in space, and it takes a whole year to travel one light year.
Strike 1.
The year 2012 - are you kidding? If the Andromeda Galaxy (which is over 100 billion stars, for goodness sake) was only 5 years away (even at light speed) it would be so large and bright that we would have no night, it would all be lit up almost as bright as daytime. You would have noticed that, I'm sure.
Strike 2.
The Andromeda Galaxy is 2 billion light years away, so even if it could travel towards us at the speed of light it would be (take a breath now) 2 BILLIION years to get here.
Strike 3.
Now if you want to worry about something that won't happen, and even if by some remote chance it could happen it would be over 2 billion years from now, then you have a lot more to worry about than the Andromeda Galaxy.
2007-06-06 00:03:47 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, it's not true. The world is not going to end in 2012, that's an urban legend going around. The Andromeda galaxy will collide with our galaxy, but not for about a billion years and you wouldn't notice over the course of a lifetime anyway. It's not really going to affect us at all; galaxies are too diffuse. Sure, it will mess up our galaxy, but probably won't actually affect the solar system.
Don't believe everything you hear. If the Mayans were all that smart, they would have invented the wheel.
Nothing moves 10 light years a second. Light is the fastest thing in the universe, and it takes 10 years to move 10 light years. Andromeda is moving MUCH slower than that.
2007-06-05 23:34:45 · answer #3 · answered by eri 7 · 5⤊ 0⤋
The Mayans did invent a wheel. Basically, they only used it for toys. It wasn't very useful for anything else because they didn't have any beasts of burden to pull it with. Llamas are pretty useless for anything other than carrying a small quantity of stuff on their back.
Read "Guns, Germs and Steel" to find out more. It's an awesome book.
Anyway, the Andromeda galaxy is going to crash in billions of years, not next decade, and galaxies crashing looks incredibly violent in fast motion but does very little damage to any individual star system. (Those that get too close to the core are fux0rd but that is a very small chance anyway.)
2007-06-06 03:29:53 · answer #4 · answered by Horatio 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
? because Yahoo Answers puts it there to make a question.
Your friend has no idea of the distances and speeds involved. While worrying about it you may step in front of a car.
The Andromeda galaxy is about 2.9 million light years away from us
http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae551.cfm
Thus if it moved at the speed of light it would take 2,900,000 years to get here and it doesn't move that fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching the Sun at about 300 kilometres per second (186 miles/sec.),
2007-06-05 23:37:29 · answer #5 · answered by Mike1942f 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
More like year 2,012,000,000. A few billion years from now. Yes, Andromeda galaxy is going to crash and totally mess up our Milky Way galaxy.
2007-06-05 23:34:35 · answer #6 · answered by Scythian1950 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
No, not for a few billion years. The 2012 myth... the world is going to end in decmeber 2012.. because the great Mayn calender ends... If the Mayans are so smart and can predict the future how come they couldnt predict their own destruction? They may have had great calenders, but right there is proof that there is no supernatural ability of the Mayan calender
2007-06-06 15:49:13 · answer #7 · answered by BrokenArrow 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Do you understand what a galaxy is?
It is like the milky way... billions of stars. You have been played. If a galaxy were going to "collide" with us in 5 years, the entire milky way would be all out of whack. A galaxy does not collide with a planet.
2007-06-06 00:00:10 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is true, but not for a billion years. It is going to crash but it may not cause serious damage. It is colliding to make a even more bigger galaxy called a elliptical galaxy. So there is nothing much to worry about.
2007-06-06 00:44:22 · answer #9 · answered by Jeevan 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Mayans.. maybe the smartest civilization of people ever to exist.. concluded that the would would end in 2012. This is an ancient speculation from thousands of years ago. Do not worry.. if this was a real threat then better measures would be taken to protect us.. (blowing up the problems) and also.. if this doesnt kill us.. global warming will. somethings gotta end it all...
2007-06-05 23:35:32 · answer #10 · answered by ellaseverson 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋