Biggest know collision since the big bang.

[Quackzilla]

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5895 95&section=news

To think that quadrillions of species could have been wiped out in a fraction of a second...

[Quackzilla]

I wonder if any intelligent life forms knew of their impending doom.

[xzafixz]

Sounds like a blast, wish i was there.

[Zenithian Legend]

So I was definitely going to make some jokes on this one, but then I read the article and thought: wow this is some interesting shit.

[beerguy961]

So I was definitely going to make some jokes on this one, but then I read the article and thought: wow this is some interesting shit.

Same here. I was trying to come up with something, but as I read, I thought, "I wanna see pictures"...

[Dok Diamond]

i hate reading stuff liek this cause it makes me wonder what the hell is out there, its so far away yet does it end and a bunch of other shit.

[Zenithian Legend]

See it makes me hope our planet gets attacked by aliens, but then the aliens are all pussies. Then we kill all the aliens and steal their spaceships, which we use to fly back to their planet. But you know what we find when we get there? We find out that the aliens that came to Earth were just "bait" to get us to come back to the real aliens, who were too busy to come to Earth. Those aliens end up eating us all. At least that's what I'm hoping for.

[epobirs]

Some folks have long devoted great effort to the question , if there are plenty of planets out there compatible with producing something we could have a conversation with, why the hell haven't we heard from the neighbors yet? The answer may simply be they don't get to exist very long before becoming microscopic collateral damage in galactic scale events. Think about that next time you're being mean to bacteria and at least take some pleasure in it.

[Dok Diamond]

or maybe the other beings are still stuck in the caveman era

[doomgaze_86]

Anyone have a video of it? I caught a glimpse of it on the news but would like to see more..

[Othergods]

If there is intelligent life out there, a higher species if you will. Why would they want to make contact with a planet whos own people can not stop killing each other? The only thing that they could expect out of the encounter is a war and possible death of some of their people.

[bfg9k]

Amen to that. If I were an alien that stumbled upon earth, I would just keep flying on by while laughing my ass (or alien equivalent) off.

[LV-426RS]

If it's 800 million light years away in distance, isn't this old news?

[Quackzilla]

or maybe the other beings are still stuck in the caveman era

The universe is infinite in bothtime and space.

We have had the ability to pick up radio signals within our solar system for 40, even though we have already established the fact that we are the only inteligent life within our solar system.

Until we can communicate with other solar systems within our galaxy we can not make assumptions about our neighbors.

There are an infinite number of species capable of intelligent thought, that is a given.

[GuilewasNK]

Interesting article. It will most likely be a long time before we can communicate with anything resembling human life. We just don't have the technology and its possible there are laws of physics that we can't yet exploit to speed the process of communication. I think it would be safe to say that at least cell organisms are out there. The universe is too vast for that not to be the case. I would love to see the pictures of those galaxies. Astronomy is always going to have something amazing being studied like that.

[mcwilliams132]

Technically it could also be the smallest since we've only been dealing with deep space astronomy for a few decades...

Blows your mind doesn't it?

[x0thedeadzone0x]

Wow, that IS really interesting. And yes I do believe there is other life somewhere out there on the entire universe, if the universe is as vast as they claim, it's not really a huge thing to consider that out of the particle of dust that our planet is, there's another particle of dust with an advanced civilized race as well?

[AlbinoNinja]

man, just makes u think how small we really are. That in one swoop all of us (cept the ninjas) could be killed. Maybe there was an intelligent race? Could they have known this was coming? What would they do if they knew their doom was in a matter of days?

Totally awesome (to the max) find QuackZilla, now im completely scared shitless

[jdevlin7756]

I wonder if this can be seen now or if it is a projection of what scientists think is happening now. They said that the collision is located about 800 million light-years away. So if we can actually see it then this is a 800 million year old current event (a new record).

And if we are only estimating that this is happening now, then how do we know. If we are only off by a couple dozen light years (pretty small in comparison to 800 million, then they could actually be missing each other. Either way, very interesting.

Also, sorry to ramble, if the universe was created in a bang, wouldn't everything have an equal outward trajectory? How could they collide?

[Bann]

What gets me is the fact that we'll probably destroy ourselves before we unravel the secrets of the universe. There's some really interesting shit out there.

[Moxio]

Whoa, this is really interesting. Astronomy always was a favorite of mine.

[FriskyTanuki]

I wonder if this can be seen now or if it is a projection of what scientists think is happening now. They said that the collision is located about 800 million light-years away. So if we can actually see it then this is a 800 million year old current event (a new record).

And if we are only estimating that this is happening now, then how do we know. If we are only off by a couple dozen light years (pretty small in comparison to 800 million, then they could actually be missing each other. Either way, very interesting.

Also, sorry to ramble, if the universe was created in a bang, wouldn't everything have an equal outward trajectory? How could they collide?

Simple, gravity. Different objects will influence others and change their previous trajectories.

[Kaijufan]

Intresting. I guess that it happened 800 billion years ago, so I cant really be too sad for any alien life that died 800 billion years ago.

[epobirs]

If there is intelligent life out there, a higher species if you will. Why would they want to make contact with a planet whos own people can not stop killing each other? The only thing that they could expect out of the encounter is a war and possible death of some of their people.

You're making a presumption from zero evidence that any other species would not face the same problems. This form of reverse snobbery has really outlived its usefullness, if it ever had any.

[epobirs]

I wonder if this can be seen now or if it is a projection of what scientists think is happening now. They said that the collision is located about 800 million light-years away. So if we can actually see it then this is a 800 million year old current event (a new record).

And if we are only estimating that this is happening now, then how do we know. If we are only off by a couple dozen light years (pretty small in comparison to 800 million, then they could actually be missing each other. Either way, very interesting.

Also, sorry to ramble, if the universe was created in a bang, wouldn't everything have an equal outward trajectory? How could they collide?

All it takes is tiny areas of difference in how the initiating event occurred. Trying to figure the details of this is where thing get deeply theoretical in astrophysics.

[epobirs]

or maybe the other beings are still stuck in the caveman era

The universe is infinite in bothtime and space.

We have had the ability to pick up radio signals within our solar system for 40, even though we have already established the fact that we are the only inteligent life within our solar system.

Until we can communicate with other solar systems within our galaxy we can not make assumptions about our neighbors.

There are an infinite number of species capable of intelligent thought, that is a given.

You realize you're contradicting yourself here, don't you? First you say not to make assumptions, then proceed to make the biggest possible.

[AlbinoNinja]

when u think about it, is a couple billion years going to be enough time to unravel all of the universes secrets? is all intelligent life simply cursed to a time limit, and then have almost everything they learn obliverated in one great explosion?

god this has gotten me thinking

[evilpenguin9000]

Perhaps once we learn some more of the universes secrets we will be able to unravel time and this will cease to be a problem. Purely hypothetical, but possible.

[The Successful Dropout]

this is all very interesting to me as well...but stuff like this happens every day and we just don't know about it because our technology isn't great enough yet and our # "eyes in the sky" are far too short from seeing what happens in every which direction at every second of the day...(run-on sentence anyone?)

im a strong believer in other life-forms out there, and i definitely believe in other intelligent life-forms out there....not to mention my strong belief that we've had or have some aliens caught and kept in laboratories somewhere on earth...call me crazy, but im more realistic than crazy


and yes, i often listen to coast to coast am...i dont believe everything i hear...and i haven't yet been abducted

[rabbitt]

See it makes me hope our planet gets attacked by aliens, but then the aliens are all pussies. Then we kill all the aliens and steal their spaceships, which we use to fly back to their planet. But you know what we find when we get there? We find out that the aliens that came to Earth were just "bait" to get us to come back to the real aliens, who were too busy to come to Earth. Those aliens end up eating us all. At least that's what I'm hoping for.

Is THAT what's been on your mind this whole time?

[snotknocker]

I've spent a lot of timewith this alien lately
http://www.planetnintendo.com/perfectdark/pd/elvis.jpg