Week2

What if, millions of light years away, things aren't so nice and soothing? Although it's hard to imagine, it's What if, millions of light years away, things aren't so nice and soothing? Although it's hard to imagine, it's possible a number of those stars could be on their way toward (or have already experienced, because of the way light travels) a space collision****.** 
 * __Space collisions__
 * Although the stars look fixed from our point of view on Earth, they're actually moving very rapidly through space, and without anything to steer them away, there's always the chance they could run into another massive body. It's almost like the universe is a giant pool table without any rail cushions. A space collision is just what it sounds like -- one body, whether it's a star, an ****asteroid or a comet, crashes into another body. The results are often spectacular displays of energy and matter, although much different from something like the explosion caused by an atomic bomb . **
 * What happens when stars -- or even ****galaxies, for that matter -- collide? Are space collisions a rare and dangerous occurrence, or do they happen pretty frequently? Could the Earth or the solar system suffer from a space collision, whether from an asteroid or a massive super galaxy? **
 * __Star and Galaxy Collisions __**
 * Thanks to photographs from space telescopes and computer modeling, astronomers are able to search for and observe the existence of both galactic and stellar collisions. Scientists originally believed these types of space collisions, also known as mergers, to be fairly rare, but research in the early 21st century has found them to be fairly common. As experts understood more about the beginning of the universe and the Big Bang theory, they realized that galactic collisions were even more common in the early stages of time. Because the universe was much smaller, galaxies were huddled closer together, and, shooting out from the origin of the Big Bang, were likely to collide into others during their journey throughout space. Even our own galaxy, the Milky Way, carries with it debris from early collisions with other massive bodies, and astronomers expect the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large neighbor, to swallow us up sometime in the distant future. **
 * A space collision might sound like perfect material for an expensive Hollywood summer blockbuster, but watching one take place would actually be much less exciting than you'd think. Even though galaxies and stars move toward each other at hundreds of miles per hour, their mergers can take millions of years to form. Instead of exploding like massive bombs, space collisions act like smooth, undefined balls of gas. Once two stellar bodies meet, the massive gravity of each one will distort the shape of the other, usually resulting in a droplet shape. **

**steffano solari**