Andromeda in Our Skies

Once I had a very interesting chat with a friend of mine in which I knew Andromeda was on a collision course with the Milky Way, our own galaxy. There are two questions I still remember:

1. Will that collision destroy our Sun or our Solar System?
2. How will the night sky look like during that event?

Well, I've done my research and found very interesting things about this topic. First, the event will take place four billion years from now and although the two galaxies will pass through each other at a velocity of 1,000,000 mi/h (yes, a million), the duration of the crash will last millions of years. This suggest that our descendants will not be amazed by their night sky as it will be always the same to them as our night sky is to us, oblivious to the changes it has gone through. Our Sun will be safe in this collision as the space between stars is so vast there's no chance of being hit by another star. So there, we're safe if we, as humans, make it that far. So there's the answer to question number one: We are safe, at least our sun and planets.

The second question is how will the night sky look like when this happens? Well, at the beginning the Andromeda galaxy will be visible to the naked eye in a very dark night approaching us until we see it crossing through the Milky Way (the starry band we see at night, that's our galaxy seen sideways). Different from the picture below, Andromeda will not be as shiny, it will have the same luminosity as the Milky Way. In the end, the merged galaxies will settle as a big elliptical galaxy in which new stars will be created due to the crash. Take a look at the pictures and be amazed at the greatness of the Universe!

In the first picture, Andromeda will appear as a smudge in the sky.

Once Andromeda is close enough, it will appear cutting through the Milky Way.As the collision compress the gases within the galaxies, massive stars will form.
Many of the new massive stars will go supernovae, like cosmic firecrackers.
Once the collision stage slows down, the resulting image on the sky will be the core of the new elliptical galaxy and no trace of the spiral galaxies will remain.

This event has occurred millions of times before, is happening as we speak and will occur millions of times in the future. Just think about this: there's an estimate of about 100 billion (100,000,000,000) galaxies in the universe, which makes me think of a previous post.

Cheers!!

Red Ring of Death

The 'Three Blinking Red Lights', as Microsoft calls them or more colloquially known as the 'Red Ring of Death' is a dreadful experience bound to happen to Xbox 360 owners all over the globe.Today it happened to me but this event not just shadowed my gaming life, but musical and entertainment as well as I used my 360 as a gaming console, a Zune dock and DVD player. Now only I have left is local (no cable) TV, which sucks BIG time.

Now I have to call 001-866-745-8312 which is spanish Technical Support based in the US which will appear on my phone bill as a very expensive long distance call (but I hope not). What do I need to have my 360 replaced and most importantly, how much time will it take? Thing is that I don't recall where the ticket is, I know it's somewhere and the Warranty is no problem as I still have the packaging and it must be there. But where is the FuCKiNG ticket?

On the good side, I will not have problems with the disc tray anymore. I'll let you know how this goes.

Haiku.009

Haunting Juno moon,
returns blasting coldness through.
Darkness veiled by Light.

Mirrored Divinity

Leonardo Da Vinci is considered a genius in the art movement. He was not only a painter, but a sculptor, architect and inventor. It is said that he was part of a more 'obscure' movement, and by this I mean 'underground'.

All his annotations are written from right to left (contrary to the usual western writing of Left to Right), thought to be developed for efficiency for a left-handed Leonardo. This writing style can be deciphered by putting a mirror and reading the mirrored image.

This is thought to be the key to that movement. A movement that hid their beliefs in sacred paintings from a vengeful Vatican. There's a book that explains this movement and the discoveries they have made.

Google's Next Acquisition

This in no way represents an expert view of these matters but I guess Google's next acquisition will be Last.fm. Reason: Last.fm just made a deal with Warner so all of Warner's will be played (streamed) trough this social network's player/radio. Last is also looking for deals with the other three major labels. If this happens, Google will have covered pretty much everything. Though I'm thrilled if this happens, I woould also like it if Microsoft makes this acquisition. Why? Well, I have an xbox360 and a zune ( and a bricked zune 80, damn) and I would love if this service was available to them, especially the 360. What do you think my IR?