Astronomy Question

New Hubble photographs, aye.

I'm total astronomy newb, so bare with me.

This reminded me of something random. I remember reading that galaxies are so sparsely spread through space that - mostly - they could "collide" but really only pass right through each other without any serious consequences. But I thought the whole idea of space was that planets/stars and whatnot are kind of held together in reference to each other by gravitational forces, so if one galaxy were to pass through another wouldn't they rip each other to shreds?

Yeah they should. Where'd you read that?

I don't remember. But that'd be so awesome to see.

I wonder how a massive, planet-to-planet collision would work out. Seconds before impact, could a massively larger object "reverse" gravity on the parallel surface of a much smaller object, actually suspending things in free orbit immediately before a smashing impact? I imagine it would all happen too fast.

In other news, Sauron has picked up his next roll in sci-fi.

In the 5th picture, it talks about 4 galaxies gravitationally interacting with each other, and an expert speculates that eventually they will merge together, he doesn't specify whether it'll be destructive or not, but merge doesn't sound as destructive as collide, or destroy.

The universe scares me, whenever I read about it, particularly seeing the numbers, it makes me realise how infinitesimally small I am.

Think how much space there is between planets. It would be unlikely they would collide.

The only reason I do not agree with the common views of Christianity is because of images like that. If Earth is just a planet in this solar system in this galaxy, what is outside of our galaxy and who else is out there?

maybe those galaxies have already been ripped apart its just taken forever for the light to come into view.

maybe it looks like they are colliding but they are light years apart from eachother and they are behind/infront of each other by billions of miles upon miles....

Our life is too short to bother with such as these things.

Pic 6 - Woah...

^ Also means that we can't rely on sight for accuracy in terms of the universe if light itself is being distorted but yeah it's pretty cool

CRAZY IDEA THEORY: Each atom in our bodies is actually a galaxy, and each proton/neutron/electron is like a star or planet, and equally each star, planet and galaxy that we see up there is just an atomic particle in someone elses universe. mind = blown.

You guys have never thought about that before?

Jeez, I must have been a really weird kid.

This will happen to our own galaxy in about 3 billion years.

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy are on a collision course. In about 3 billion years, the two galaxies will collide. Then over a span of 1 billion years or so after a very complex gravitational dance, they will merge to form an elliptical galaxy.

the real question is what is anti matter, and if you can contain it in something, wtf is it.

Well currently the most elementary particles known are quarks, leptons and gauge bosons (Which make up the protons/neutrons/electrons) and there must literally be an infinite number of those in the universe... imagine of each of THOSE was a universe in itself.