The Future's so Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.

You learn something new everyday, and today I learned that something is pulling our galaxy, along with tens of thousands of other galaxies, toward itself at roughly 14 million miles per hour. What that something is, we don't know. We just know it's some type of giant mass named 'The Great Attractor" pulling us towards it. I learned this over the weekend. Astronomers have known it for years, the bastards.

This got me to thinking. At 14 million mph how long until we get there? Given that the Great Attractor is 250 million light years from our Solar System (how is that possible if the universe is only 6000?), we should arrive in, oh, 12.5 billion years or so. Except we won't be around when this happens, and I don't mean just you and I. The Earth won't be around either. In 5 billion years the Sun will become a Red Giant and its radius will be large enough to envelop the Earth.

Do not despair. There is some other cool stuff that will happen way before that. The galaxy known as Andromeda is still on a collision course with the Milky Way. When that happens (only 2.5 billion years from now) the two galaxies are expected to merge and form one larger galaxy. It is possible there will still be humans on Earth to witness this, and there is a small chance that one of Andromeda's planets will have intelligent life willing to sell us oil for cheap.

In the not so distant future, Smith's Cloud is expected to merge with the Milky Way in only 20 to 40 million years at a point in the Perseus Arm. The impact is expected to produce a burst of star formations, which should be pretty neat to see.

Okay, so what are some cool things you can expect to be alive to see? Well, the movie Religulous is out this fall. Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB8fPJ6zds8. Also, The Dark Knight is out this Friday. That should be pretty cool.