Duck! Huge gas cloud will hit Milky Way

By Michael on January 12, 2008 at 6:23 pm | In Blog Posts |

The BBC is reporting on an announcement from last week’s AAS meeting:

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is racing towards a collision with the Milky Way, astronomers have announced.

Smith’s Cloud, as it is known, may set off spectacular fireworks when it smacks into our galaxy in 20-40 million years.

30 million years is tomorrow in astronomical terms. This interaction is taking place as we speak. These kinds of collisions, like our eventual collision with the Andromeda Galaxy, will keep our galaxy interesting for a very long time. In fact, it’s possible that our very existence is a result of a wave of star formation from such a collision.

So getting knocked around a bit is actually a good thing if you are a galaxy.