Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the U.S. Navy to rename one of its ships, honoring the late gay rights activist Harvey Milk, as Pride month gets underway.
Astronomers have believed for decades that the Milky Way is on a collision course with our nearest big neighbor, Andromeda. They seemed all but certain the two galaxies were destined to smash in about 4 to 5 billion years, combining into one colossal galaxy in space. In that scenario, the merger would trigger a riot of star births and deaths and maybe even thrust the sun into a different orbit. We were told all this was inevitable. But new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia spacecraft, run by the European Space Agency, suggests that the future of Earth's home galaxy...more is not that cut and dried. The study, which relied on 100,000 computer simulations stretching 10 billion years into the future, appears in the journal Nature Astronomy. "Based on the best available data, the fate of our Galaxy is still completely open," the scientists wrote.
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Astronomers saw one galaxy impale another. The damage was an eye-opener.
A close-up view of a prodigious number of stars in the Andromeda galaxy.
Credit: NASA / ESA / B. Williams
The Milky Way and Andromeda are part of a cluster of about 100 galaxies, held together by gravity, known as the "local group." For more than a century, scientists have known Andromeda is creeping toward the Milky Way. That led many experts to believe a collision was unavoidable.Turns out the future is much more murky. The researchers ran computer simulations with 22 different variables that tested different possible routes for the galaxies, trying to predict where they would end up. Their study found that the two galaxies would remain in the same plane as they circle each other."But this doesn't mean they need to crash," said Till Sawala, the lead author, who is based at University of Helsinki in Finland, in a statement. "They could still go past each other."
These are possible scenarios for a future encounter between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.
Credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / DSS / Till Sawala / Joseph DePasquale
The researchers found that two other nearby galaxies — the Large Magellanic Cloud and Messier 33 — could have significant influence on whether the Milky Way and Andromeda ultimately collide. Though these galaxies are smaller, they have enough mass to tip the scale. Here's where things get downright mind-blowing: When Messier 33, sometimes called M33 or the Triangulum galaxy, is included in the simulation, it makes a galactic merger more likely. But the Large Magellanic Cloud, whose orbit intersects those of the Milky Way and Andromeda, makes it less likely. In short, it's a real "will they, won't they?". With all of the data put together, the team arrived at a near-equal, 50-percent chance of the two galaxies hitting within the next 10 billion years. In about half of the possible outcomes tested, the two main galaxies skirted by each other, with a margin of 500,000 light-years between them or less: That's about five times the width of the Milky Way.Sawala acknowledges the irony that with more precise Hubble data, scientists are less sure about what will happen. After all, they've only narrowed down the odds of a cosmic cataclysm to a coin toss.
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"That’s because of the more complex...
WASHINGTON :The Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy are currently hurtling through space toward each other at a speed of about 250,000 miles per hour (400,000 kph), setting up a possible future galactic collision that would wreck both of them.But how likely is this cosmic crash? While previous rese
A new European study out Monday throws into question conventional wisdom that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are on a collision course that will take out our galaxy and the solar system with it.
100,000 computer simulations reveal Milky Way's fate—and it might not be what we thought.
It's been textbook knowledge for over a century that our Milky Way galaxy is doomed to collide with another large spiral galaxy, Andromeda, in the next five billion years and merge into one even bigger galaxy. But a fresh analysis published in the journal Nature Astronomy is casting that longstanding narrative in a more uncertain light. The authors conclude that the likelihood of this collision and merger is closer to the odds of a coin flip, with a roughly 50 percent prob...moreability that the two galaxies will avoid such an event during the next ten billion years.
Both the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies (M31) are part of what's known as the Local Group (LG), which also hosts other smaller galaxies (some not yet discovered) as well as dark matter (per the prevailing standard cosmological model). Both already have remnants of past mergers and interactions with other galaxies, according to the authors.
"Predicting future mergers requires knowledge about the present coordinates, velocities, and masses of the systems partaking in the interaction," the authors wrote. That involves not just the gravitational force between them but also dynamical friction. It's the latter that dominates when galaxies are headed toward a merger, since it causes galactic orbits to decay.Read full article
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We’ve seen a few Xbox-styled kitchen items over the last few years, from the Series X fridge to the Series S toaster. The latest one is probably not one for those of you in the US. Over the weekend, Xbox Canada revealed a Xbox Series X bagged milk pitcher styled after the Xbox Series X.
Milk in a bag is a long-standing tradition in Canada, India, South America and several other parts of the world. The idea is that you plop a bag into a pitcher, cut off the corner and pour away, all the while taking great care not to spill any.
There are practical benefits, such as bags taking up le...moress space in garbage or recycling. But containers for bagged milk are typically boring white jugs. At least until now.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Xbox Canada (@xboxcanada)
The Xbox Series X Milk Pitcher comes in white or black and it can hold up to 1.3 liters (fine, if you insist, 2.75 pints) of bagged milk. That should give you enough fuel for your next Halo Infinite deathmatch battle or adventure in the Oblivion remaster. Sadly, there’s no word as yet if Xbox Canada is going to sell this thing or if it’s just a fun marketing gimmick.
I get it, bagged milk confused me too before my first visit to Canada as a teen. But milk in a bag is as Canadian as poutine, Letterkenny, hockey games on frozen ponds and The Beaches. As one of Engadget’s Canadian contingent, it's my civic duty to test this out. My email’s in my bio, Xbox.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-latest-xbox-kitchen-kitsch-is-a-series-x-milk-jug-for-canadians-184154694.html?src=rss