Fascinating. "It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed." Pretty

Fascinating. "It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed." Pretty close, but not precisely zero danger -- and from a broader perspective, this is a curious statement when by this point in time, four billion years from now, the Sun will be nearing the end of its life and will already have roasted the Earth into sterility (barring intelligent intervention). "Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today." This bodes well for the long-term safety of the Solar System; it should be less likely to be broiled by supernovas or black hole accretion disk x-ray emissions further out from the merged core. "Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31’s tangential motion. Until now, astronomers had not been able to measure M31's sideways motion in the sky... The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way. 'This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the galaxy over a five- to seven-year period,' says Jay Anderson of STScI. ... The space shuttle servicing missions to Hubble upgraded it with ever more-powerful cameras, which have given astronomers a long-enough time baseline to make the critical measurements needed to nail down M31's motion." The Space Shuttle really made major contributions to science by allowing regular maintenance and upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope. "The Hubble observations and the consequences of the merger are reported in three papers that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal." The articles don't appear to be listed yet in the Table of Contents for an upcoming issue of ApJ. Stay tuned... Edit to add: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/video/a/ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/vi... This computer model video of the next eight billion years in a minute and 16 seconds is mind-blowing.