Today after work I went for a walk. I walked for an hour and a half. I am ever more amazed at how far I can take myself on two legs. I could walk to Cuba if I had the time. I would.
On my walk I had some quiet time to digest some of the information I read in a science article earlier. In about 300 billion years, Andromeda and our galaxy are going to collide. The mess will form a whole new galaxy. This happens pretty often in space... colliding galaxies. And by often, I mean, every few billion years or so.
The article mentioned how it would appear to be a slow motion collision from afar. Our Milky Way is approximately 2.2 million light years away from Andromeda. That gap is closing at around 310,000 miles per hour. Nearly 12.2 miles per second. Per. Second. And in the universe of everything, that is slow motion.
So the Milky Way is sort of horizontal, and Andromeda is perpindicular to that. We will be sliced like a skill saw. Stars will be flung trillions of light years away from us both. It will be a merciless, violent cataclysm of cosmic matter.
At 310,000 miles per hour. In slow motion. In 300 billion years. And that is the most comforting idea to me right now. Nothing matters, really. Whether I have a job or not, whether anyone likes or hates me. Love, depression, the cost of oil, hurricanes, the republican national convention... The universe will be churning even 300 billion years from now, and nothing I do or anyone else does will affect the course of this catastrophe.
I hope there are spectacular explosions. I hope the wreck is beautiful.
On my walk I had some quiet time to digest some of the information I read in a science article earlier. In about 300 billion years, Andromeda and our galaxy are going to collide. The mess will form a whole new galaxy. This happens pretty often in space... colliding galaxies. And by often, I mean, every few billion years or so.
The article mentioned how it would appear to be a slow motion collision from afar. Our Milky Way is approximately 2.2 million light years away from Andromeda. That gap is closing at around 310,000 miles per hour. Nearly 12.2 miles per second. Per. Second. And in the universe of everything, that is slow motion.
So the Milky Way is sort of horizontal, and Andromeda is perpindicular to that. We will be sliced like a skill saw. Stars will be flung trillions of light years away from us both. It will be a merciless, violent cataclysm of cosmic matter.
At 310,000 miles per hour. In slow motion. In 300 billion years. And that is the most comforting idea to me right now. Nothing matters, really. Whether I have a job or not, whether anyone likes or hates me. Love, depression, the cost of oil, hurricanes, the republican national convention... The universe will be churning even 300 billion years from now, and nothing I do or anyone else does will affect the course of this catastrophe.
I hope there are spectacular explosions. I hope the wreck is beautiful.
mysweetisrael:
I'm touching myself feverishly just from thinking about it.