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Whew

6 comments on Whew

Whew

: I love the understatement of the cosmology beat:

Astronomers have spotted two monster galactic clusters slamming together in one of the biggest collisions ever recorded.

The smash-up poses no danger to Earth — it is about 800 million light-years away, and the galaxies involved tend to speed by each other without crashing — but the Milky Way could be on a similar collision course in a few billion years.

It’s happening 800 million light-years away. Yes, I’d say we have little cause to worry.

6 responses to “Whew”

  1. MWB Avatar
    MWB

    ahem…
    I think you mean cosmology.
    Unless you think the story is “made up” (cosmetology).

  2. Sterling Avatar
    Sterling

    It’s happening 800 million light-years away.
    I think you mean it happened 800 million light years away. It’s over and done with by now.

  3. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Not to get all Olaf Stapledon on ya, but nobody commenting on this has reacted to it as anything more than a big fireworks show, when the reality is that it probably represented the utter destruction of millions of species and thousands of civilizations whose artistic achievements and histories we will never know. Of course, 800 million years is probably time enough to get over it. And we hadn’t made any art or history by then, either, since there weren’t even animals yet then. Still. A thousand Venices and Renaissances could have gone up in balls of flame. Makes ya think.

  4. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    MWB: Boy, is my face red. And it isn’t from too much rouge. Thanks. fixed.

  5. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    While this particular incident may not be a worry to us, other events that are many light years away could be. All it takes is one star nearby creating an x-ray flare. We wouldn’t even realize it, because everything on earth would die in an instant.

  6. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    I’d like to echo Robert’s point in part. When we enter the light cone of an event that took place, say, 10 light years away, it happened ten years ago. It’s all over and done with. Except that in general relativity that statement doesn’t make a great deal of sense. For us, this is our actual experience of the event, happening now. And it may be of substantial concern.
    It would only take one supernova in a gigantic distance around our system to extinguish all life on earth, down to the simplest forms. It’s quite possible for events in the galactic core to do the same thing.
    So it’s certainly incorrect to say that just because events “happened long ago” or were very far away that they cannot harm us.