> From: "Eric Walker" <eric.wal...@gmail.com> > Sent: Saturday, June 2, 2012 1:53:04 PM
> That's pretty exciting. Forget zombie-producing contagion or nuclear > annihilation. The second video presents an apocalyptic vision of two > galaxies tearing stars away from one another and flinging them off > into the outer reaches of space. The accompanying text says "the sun > could end up in a completely different region of the galaxy, one much > farther from the galactic center, but that the Earth and solar system > would survive." But what if the solar system ends up in one of the > star producing regions, or really far out there, effectively orphaned? > Also, what are the chances of another star coming close enough to > disrupt the solar system and form a binary system, sucking the earth > into it as it does? What happens to a star when a planet with a bunch > of heavy elements gets collides with it? Does the planet just pass > through it or is it pulled apart or vaporized? The video is an external view --- showing that the centers of the two galaxies have several encounters before settling into an ellipse. Roughly Best to Worst : 1. Sol+Planets stay in a similar position. (pretty much as illustrated in the NASA slides) 2. Sol+Planets get expelled far out -- safe, an excellent view, but lonely -- for a while, though when one comes back things might get too interesting (eg #5). 3. Sol+Planets pass through a dust cloud -- they're actually pretty thin, so at most there would be more meteorites. Nothing like the "bombardments" in early history. Also a bit dull -- one would only see the local stars, and then either darkness or a nebula from the inside. I don't think that a new planetary disk would form. 4. Sol+Planets get disrupted, and Earth leaves the Goldilocks zone. eg binary system mentioned by Eric. 5. Sol+Planets get displaced towards the galactic center(s). Black holes merge, with associated radiation.
