Thanks for this Yui

... hundreds of billions of other such galaxies as well!

It's hard to believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe.

Unfortunately, the distance between galaxies and even the stars within our own galaxy is IMMENSE! When Andromeda "collides" with our Milky Way in a few billion years, the probability of any two stars hitting each other is about zero despite the hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy! The gas between the stars will rub against each other and glow, however.

...without collision of it's stars. The galaxies even pass right through each other and become distorted by gravitational forces. The reason this can happen was explained by Carl Sagan in "Cosmos".

If we could shrink a galaxy down to the size of a quarter, the nearest galaxy in it's local group could be just about three feet away. That's why they set out on a collision course.

If we could shrink our sun down the the size of that quarter, the nearest star in the galaxy would be about 400 miles away. It's hard to imagine such scale when viewing an image of a distant galaxy.

Thanx for posting. K&R

...I think the Hubble is one of the greatest, and noblest, achievements in human history...maybe we aren't such savages after all...

Hubble - one of the best investments ever! I think it looks like a flying bug.





Thanks for posting!