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>it’s extremely unlikely that any individual stars will collide What do you mean they'll pass through each other.
by ses1984 7y ago
>it’s extremely unlikely that any individual stars will collide
What do you mean they'll pass through each other.
- lukifer 7y agoThe distances are so vast, that essentially, yes. Think about two sailors in small boats, crossing an ocean in opposite directions, and how unlikely it would be that their boats collide. Now multiply that by several orders of magnitude. One of my favorite factoids: if you fire a laser from the surface of the earth (and the beam magically stayed perfectly straight), you have a small but significant chance of hitting the sun or the moon, but anything beyond that, the scale is so enormous, the odds that your laser would ever hit a celestial body anywhere in the universe are effectively zero.
- cooljacob204 7y agoAnywhere in the observable universe. If it is truly infinite and we pretend the laser instantly reaches wherever we point it then the chance is pretty much 100%.
- Mirioron 7y agoDoes that factoid assume that the laser beam's width doesn't increase?
- saagarjha 7y agoYes, otherwise even a laser beam that diverges slightly from being perfectly collimated would subtend a fraction of the night sky and thus contain a large number of galaxies.
- ses1984 7y agoYou're confusing me more. Stars passing through each other like you said before to me implies collision. Would you say these sailors are going to pass through each other?
- ajna91 7y agoThey stars won't pass through each other. The "solar systems" will pass through each other.
- ses1984 7y agoI would have guessed that even that is highly unlikely.
- AareyBaba 7y agoThe stars will pass BY each other. The galaxies will pass THROUGH each other without collisions. There are many youtube videos that try to visualize the incomprehensible scale of space. Here is one just for our solar system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nkrisc 7y agoEffectively they'll all miss each other. There is so much empty space in between stars that even when two galaxies collide the stars will interact gravitationally, but likely none will physically collide. Think of two clouds of gas colliding. The clouds as a whole collide, yes, but there's no molecular fusion happening. The molecules themselves don't collide. "Pass through each other" is not the clearest wording.
- jcims 7y agoThis provides some idea of how sparse the universe is: https://medium.com/@clay.c.edgar/if-earth-was-a-grain-of-sand-22ea58f43d5e https://medium.com/@clay.c.edgar/if-earth-was-a-grain-of-san...