February STSCI lecture review
This months lecture Milky Way vs Andromeda: When galaxies collide. was really interesting, and covered material about how galaxies are formed, looking for life and what may happen when in 7 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own, home galaxy.
The lecture also talked about how galaxies were first discovered and how, only in the last 100 years have we really started to learn a lot more about them. Why the two will merge is linked to the expansion of the universe.
Earth, of course, won't exist by then. The sun, being 4 billion years old, will have expanded to a red giant. As the duration of a 'main sequence star' is about 10 billion years (cite OU Open Learn The Sun)
So the lecture also included about how we could find earth 2.0, the fact that this. may not be easy given the time it will take to reach even the nearest start.
Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) and the planet around that isn't very hospitable.
Personal comment to add to this
I would guess it also raises the question if it will take 10's of 1000s of years to reach will it be the same or have developed to be more life friendly, then on the other side of that a planet that is life friendly now, may like the Earth not be so friendly i 1000's of years time.
Looking forward to the next lecture in March.
REFERENCES
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#galaxies,#space,#Telescope,#stsci,#Science,Physics,#Astronomy
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