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UnpricedToaster t1_j1kxikm wrote

Does the Milky Way need a hug? Because the Andromeda is coming to give her one in 5 billion years.

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albene t1_j1lfl0w wrote

It seems that Andromeda and the Milky Way are already in each other’s personal space (pun intended)

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porkchop_d_clown t1_j1m1g59 wrote

>each other’s personal space

The pictures of what the night sky will look like are crazy. Reminds me of that old Asimov story, Nightfall.

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Aarcn t1_j1l9mll wrote

Are we fucked when that happens?

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datsro24 t1_j1l9okr wrote

Homie, we fucked way before that

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bk27465 t1_j1mv9gw wrote

Yeah i like how human ego thinks weare even gonna last another 5k years

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ncastleJC t1_j1my110 wrote

Honestly like when people start fantasizing Dyson spheres around the sun when you need over 1 million earths to fill the sun like where do we even have the resources for that? All this talk about advancing us into the stars while the poor are still poor. We just want to move our problems elsewhere without acknowledging we’re the same.

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bk27465 t1_j1n0v43 wrote

A well described piece of truth.

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Glooryhoole t1_j1n19y9 wrote

Yeah we’d need many many earths worth of actual workable material to create the sphere. Let alone figuring out how it actually harvests and transports the energy. I don’t think that would ever be possible

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fnarrly t1_j1narke wrote

IIRC, there is plenty of material available for such development without leaving our solar system, it’s just that most of it is out in the Oort Cloud. With the current tech we have this is not doable, but advances in space travel could make such things possible, over a period of millennia.

I do not personally think we will make it that long, environmental and societal collapse will end our species’ advancement first.

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GeorgeOlduvai t1_j1n5yix wrote

That's why a Niven Ring is a better idea, unless you're talking about the original concept of a Dyson sphere.

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ncastleJC t1_j1nbl4s wrote

A Niven ring is just a variant. Again where do we get the resources to surround the sun when over 99% of the systems mass is literally in the star we’re trying to orbit.

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602Zoo t1_j1noldb wrote

A Dyson sphere doesn't need a bunch of mass. It can be thinly spread out and enough material could be harvested from our solar system to build one.

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wbsgrepit t1_j1obrtj wrote

I think you are greatly missed under estimating the amount of ‘material’ that would be needed. At a distance that could be made even theoretically stable against the gravity of the sun you would need to harvest solar systems of ‘material’. Never mind you would need specific types of material not just any atoms — assuming you are spending 1000s of generations of effort (if not more) for something more worthwhile than a simple passive enclosure.

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602Zoo t1_j1orrzr wrote

I'm not underestimating the amount of material it would take to encircle the sun. Between the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets including oort cloud objects we would have enough material to encircle the sun many times over.

The gathering of said materials would be the issue not their abundance. As you stated, it would take multiple generations to complete the project of gathering minerals and forging them into something useful. That would be our road block, the solor system has more than enough to build the structure but we may not have the discipline to coordinate the resources and manpower for such an undertaking.

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wbsgrepit t1_j1p84jx wrote

I mean it is estimated that there is roughly 10^57 atoms in our solar system bodies not including the sun. Thats all types of atoms (including argon, helium etc) -- but lets assume they are all of the most optimal material to make a 1 atom thick sphere at a distance from the sun that would not collapse or blow apart from gravitational forces or solar winds. You would run out of atoms before completing half of such a sphere. And to what end? The sphere would not do anything nor would you have a planet to power as you just used all of the available atoms to construct your partial sphere..

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602Zoo t1_j1rddgt wrote

We don't need to build a solid structure around the sun just a loose formation of satellites. The real question would be is how dense do these satellites have to be to create an effective Dyson sphere.

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Legitimate_Pirate249 t1_j1nu9mx wrote

To be fair, a Dyson sphere is a bad example of your point because it's well known that a Dyson sphere is a sci-fi concept that is only theoretically possible and is obviously very far outside of our capabilities as humans currently.

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CaoPai t1_j1nv793 wrote

Dyson Spheres? Like the vacuum? I hardly think they could survive space.

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bk27465 t1_j1olo23 wrote

Sir you are in r/space this is NOT a walmart!

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Weazy-N420 t1_j1llao3 wrote

Not at all!! The distances are so vast and gravity being, well gravity, there probably won’t be any collisions at all, just a seamless merger. Like a Galactic Zipper. We will combine like Voltron to form a bigger Galaxy. Bet it’s going to be amazing. Imagine the night sky when Andromeda is lighting it up!

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Nano_Burger t1_j1lv2bn wrote

I nominate Voltron as the name of the new galaxy. Milkdromada or Androway just won't have the gravitas that will frighten away extragalactic invaders.

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RaynOfFyre1 t1_j1mh0qc wrote

“Do you know what gravitas sounds like? Greetings. All.”

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KeithWorks t1_j1middl wrote

The invaders will already be here, in our own new Voltron galaxy

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floydink t1_j1midl8 wrote

Figure it’ll just turn into the “milky andromeda way”

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RustyShackleford131 t1_j1m9eij wrote

I’ve seen some artists rendering of what it will look like at various points in time and it makes me said I won’t be around to see it. Before they start actually merging you would be able to see andromeda in its entirety in the sky.

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amitym t1_j1mgh2u wrote

"...the sombre hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of colour and beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. ... But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of creation; for we knew the universe when it was young."

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schmokeabutt t1_j1mfscx wrote

So, as I understand it the collision of the galaxy will ultimately sling some stars into space without a galaxy home. With Earth and our sun suspected of being closer to the tip of one of the spirals, what are chances we get flung off into deep space?

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MeatisOmalley t1_j1lmwc3 wrote

If we haven't figured out intergalactic space travel within 5 billion years, we were probably already fucked.

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FluffyTid t1_j1le5vm wrote

Not really, space is so huge we are so unlikely to get close enough to anything

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Nickslife89 t1_j1lnnr5 wrote

Ill be dirt, and so will my great to the 100th grandson.

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bigloser42 t1_j1ltvle wrote

But your 6̶6̶,̶6̶6̶6̶,̶6̶6̶6̶ᵗ̶ʰ̶ 200,000,000ᵗʰ grandson will have to deal with it(assuming a 7̶5̶ 25 year average l̶i̶f̶e̶s̶p̶a̶n̶ generation length)

Edited because thinking is hard.

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Aquaticulture t1_j1lysfc wrote

Are you confusing lifespans with generations?

There are roughly 3 generations per 75 years.

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bigloser42 t1_j1m2djq wrote

No, absolutely not. Well maybe a little bit. Ok, a lot.

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wbsgrepit t1_j1oc4tg wrote

Given the rate of genetic mutations even if there was not many many extinction events in that time there would be nothing living that resembles a human.

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bigloser42 t1_j1ocvk0 wrote

I didn’t say human. I said grandson. Go far enough back and a fish is your grandfather.

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GoodolBen t1_j1lu0ha wrote

With an average generation time of 25 years, your great^200,000,000th grandson would be dirt

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Hawk_in_Tahoe t1_j1mko6q wrote

And before that, you were a star.

Same for your 100th grandson.

And eventually, you’ll meet each other in a black hole.

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FlyingSpacefrog t1_j1lyuki wrote

Yes because the sun will be nearing its end of life at the same time and expanding into a red giant that will stretch out to fill the space currently occupied by the planets Venus and Mercury, and possibly the earth as well.

But the actual galactic merger is unlikely to see stars get close enough to disrupt the orbits of planets around our star. The orbits of stars themselves around the galaxy will change in unexpected ways.

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Atechiman t1_j1mb19q wrote

Yes but not because of Andromeda. The start of the Andromeda/milky way merger is about five billion years away. The sun becomes a red giant in six billion years, but it is getting hotter and larger as it approaches, the last non- random number I saw put water evaporating on earth about 1.75 billion to 3 billion years from now. Needless to say this wouldn't be good for humanity.

Both those numbers are also estimates. Very good estimates, but estimates none the less. So even if we survive water becoming dust there is a chance we will be consumed by the sun before Andromeda merges.

The merger itself while interesting probably won't do much to our system besides shaking up our neighborhood. Unless of course we are one the unfortunates to be ejected. Though all that will do is make the night sky dimmer.

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PaigeOrion t1_j1mmoo0 wrote

Worry about gas clouds in our vicinity colliding and generating x-rays across broad swaths of the sky….

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plaverty9 t1_j1m2dp1 wrote

If you're still here in 5 billion years, you might have more problems than that.

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Vacman85 t1_j1mnkz7 wrote

No we’re not. I know it’s a fiction story, but if you like to read, check out Stephan Baxter’s “Thousand Earths”. His character goes FAR into the future.

Essentially the prevailing theory is that although the galaxies will “collide”, the distances involved are still so vast, that if humans are still around by then, the collision will have no impact on our solar system.

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MaznikNebula t1_j1mfflh wrote

We'll be fucked well before dat.

But no. The distances/ average concentration of, well, stuff is very low in both, especially stars.

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275MPHFordGT40 t1_j1ml9z2 wrote

Apparently there is a low chance of any collisions because of how vast space is

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Malachorn t1_j1n7v14 wrote

Our sun is 864,000 miles in diameter (more than 100x wider than Earth and obviously the biggest deal in our solar system).

Earth is 93,000,000 miles from sun.

Neptune is 3,000,000,000 miles from sun.

The edge of our solar system is kinda debatable... but should at least be considered to be 9,000,000,000 miles from sun.

Proxima Centauri? About 25,300,000,000,000 miles away. And that's our nearest neighbor in the vastness of space and "close" to us - there's a reason we don't use either miles or kilometers when talking about space.

Basically... there is just so much more "nothing" in these solar systems, with even so much more between them, that merging galaxies are akin to putting a few golf balls in a football stadium and then randomly throwing a few more onto the field. Odds are unbelievably low that any of those golf balls come into contact with each other and, instead, they all just sit on whatever grass they happen to be on and never really notice fact that there are actually more golf balls on that field. And, of course, that's simply imagining a completely flat 2D surface everything is sitting on...

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dotBombAU t1_j1ngodh wrote

From what I read, no actually. Assuming we survived 5bln years.

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Chrol18 t1_j1m12lf wrote

Probably won't be there any humans on earth when that does happen. Humanity will go extinct way before that.

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