Hubble gallery of galaxy crashes, with added bonus simulations
Click here for astonishingly large version
Click here for video selection
After you've done that, trundle over to Hos's place and run your own simulations
PS: Hos hisself has the animation embedded from youtube, with added bonus history and context.
It is, after all, his simulation, and very nice it is too.
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So, how long does it take for the full process of galaxy collision to take place? It would seem to be quite slow from the animations, assuming that other galaxies spin about as fast as the Milky Way (where, as the experts say: "we go 'round every two hundred million years"). Still, assuming that sentient beings are in one of them, what does it feel like to be there? What do they see?
Kudos to Frank Summers, who took our simulation data and made a pretty fan-freaking-tastic video out of it. Thanks Frank!
Andrea, the timescale for a big galaxy merger to take place is several hundreds of millions of years. So you can't "watch it happen." But you certainly would have a pretty impressive sky if you were living in a galaxy which was in the process of merging with another big galaxy.
If you live to be several billion years old, you might get a chance to see that when Andromeda closes in!
Here's an easier way to view the fullsize image: http://www.footnote.com/image/59865219/
"If you live to be several billion years old, you might get a chance to see that when Andromeda closes in!"
Now, that's a good reason for diet and exercise!
TIMELINE COSMIC FUTURE
A few years old, but still entertaining.