Friday 4 January 2019

No Panic Just Yet

I don't know what i will be doing in 2.5 billion years time but whatever it is i had better be sitting down because our Solar System is about to be sent spinning out into space courtesy of a Galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way.
Astrophysicists at Durham University conducted a computer simulation to find out more about the movement of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy that orbits the Milky Way and found that it is set to smack straight into our Galaxy.
The galaxy is 63,000 light years from the Milky Way and currently heading away from us at a rate of 250 miles per second but the physicists believe that it is set to slow down and head back towards us.
The resulting collision will shake the whole Milky Way and lead researcher Dr Marius Cautun warns the collision could 'knock us out of the Milky Way and into space' due to the stars being shifted into new gravitational pulls which could change the orbit of planets which in turn could move us from the 'Goldilocks zone' and make the planet too hot or too cold for life to survive on.
I wouldn't panic just yet though, the collision isn’t set to take place for another 2.5 billion years so you are safe to start watching that box set you got for Christmas.

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