• ameancow@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    “Where is the Galaxy taking us?”

    Towards the andromeda galaxy which is over twice the size of the Milky Way. We are hurtling towards each other at about a quarter millions miles per hour.

    For thousands of years after you die, that little fuzzy spot near Cassiopeia will slowly get larger and larger in the sky, and in about a four billion years, long after the Earth’s oceans have dried up and the sun is a giant, reddish monster hovering in the sky, and our magnetic field will have long since died out, our atmosphere will have been mostly stripped away and the weather will feel like being on the highest mountains in an oven, the night sky will be covered with a dazzling display of the Andromeda galaxy overhead, spiral arms visible with the naked eye stretching from horizon to horizon.

    We will merge, in a series of passes through each other, with almost no stars actually colliding most likely, although a good number will be ejected into the emptiness of intergalactic space, and will finally settle into a new shape, and may trigger a new phase of star formation as new clouds of gas and dust collide and collapse in the new super-galaxy.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Interesting article but it’s sad to see that website using dark patterns like subscribe popups and fucking with the back button.

    • Unbecredible@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      Oh no you zoomed out to far and triggered the weird sensation. How bizarre it all is!! To know these things as little ape creatures. So small as to barely exist in a lake of space and an ocean of time. Whywhywhyhowwhyhowhowhow is any of this real???

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        You’re also made of 30-trillion little microscopic machines with vastly more complexity each than even the most fantastic clockwork we’ve ever devised, that are each working in harmony with each other, creating a vast machine that is continually breaking itself apart and rebuilding itself from parts of its environment as it moves through time and space.

        And somehow you can breath either manually or automatically without breaking a stride.

    • Seth Taylor@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Knowing there’s no chance imaginable of being able to witness all this is so depressing… My death anxiety feeds on thoughts like this.

      • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        On the plus side, we live at a time where we can still observe the cosmic microwave background radiation and total solar eclipses.

        Since the moon’s orbit grows by 3" every year, after a few million years it’ll be far enough away that it won’t completely eclipse the sun anymore.

        And in a billion year’s time, the CMB will be redshifted so far into deep radio wavelengths that it’ll be impossible to observe

    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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      16 hours ago

      First thank you for filling in OP’s coverup of Mama’s intentions.

      We will merge, in a series of passes through each other, with almost no stars actually colliding

      So then, we’re just going for a ride to a farm upstate :(