It's been known for some time now that Milky Way and Andromeda are heading towards each other and since about year 2000 a.d. it is known that it will occur in about five billion years - the Milky Way and Andromeda may collide. A new galaxy may form. Actually it's invevitable. The two black holes attracted by each other's gravity will merge. The course is set.
If life or humanity will still exist at that time in the future our solar system has two possibilities.
1. If Andromeda hits our galaxy from another side of it, we being as far away from it as possible, it is possible that our star system will be catapulted into intergalactic space.
2. If we are close enough to the collision the radiation, gamma rays from the two black holes going quasar will instantly destroy any atmosphere any of our star system planet has or will have. The planets will toast.
So it seems that even if we leave our star system in search of a safe place, then that safe place can not possibly be in our own galaxy. And of course not in Andromeda galaxy.
It seems that even if we calculate at which place we will be at the exact time of the two galaxies colliding, our fate is to leave our Milky Way galaxy. By natural means or not.
I won't go into sci-fi of humanity leaving our galaxy on intergalactical star ships, but my question for space scientists here - how will it effect the stability of our own star system if we're thrown out of our galaxy at an increasing speed?

p.s. I have another question that may require a new thread, but alas.. -> what happens to the initial black hole when it is swallowed by another black hole?
Do the singularities merge? Can it be observed from inside the singularity?

It's been known for some time now that Milky Way and Andromeda are heading towards each other .......it is known that it will occur in about five billion years - the Milky Way and Andromeda may collide. ........ how will it effect the stability of our own star system if we're thrown out of our galaxy at an increasing speed?

It's closer to 3 billion than 5... Either way life on Earth will have become untenable before then, in around 1 to 1.5 billion years, because of increased solar temperature.

There has been a recalculation for the collision? I didn't know of it. Can you please give a source? I don't doubt your words, I'm just eager to read more about it.

Yes, it is true about the Earth, but not about our star system as a whole.
As you see I haven't mentioned our specific planet anywhere.
The habitable zone then will be further away from the centre of it (our system).

I'm pondering the possibility that the result of the collision of the two galaxies will be an elliptical galaxy. Actually, the thought is that elliptical galaxies form exclusively due to mergers of galaxies, but not all mergers of galaxies generate an elliptical galaxy (e.g. our galaxy has experimented at least one merger in the past and is not elliptical)

Here is one supercomputer simulation of the merge -> http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/hp/vo/ava/movies/G0601andmilwy.mpeg

This movie shows a supercomputer simulation of one possible collision scenario between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Each spiral galaxy is represented by a disk of stars surrounded by a spherical "dark matter" halo. The simulation contains a total of more than 100,000,000 virtual particles. of "dark matter" halo for a total of more than 100M particles for the galaxy pair. The Milky Way is shown face-on and moves from the bottom up to the left of Andromeda and the to the upper right. Andromeda is tilted from this perspective. The movie's field of view is about one million light years (10 billion billion kilometers) across, and the total elapsed time of the movie is about 1,000,000,000 years!
source (http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/hp/vo/ava/avapages/G0601andmilwy.html)

It's been known for some time now that Milky Way and Andromeda are heading towards each other and since about year 2000 a.d. it is known that it will occur in about five billion years - the Milky Way and Andromeda may collide. A new galaxy may form. Actually it's invevitable. The two black holes attracted by each other's gravity will merge. The course is set.
If life or humanity will still exist at that time in the future our solar system has two possibilities.
1. If Andromeda hits our galaxy from another side of it, we being as far away from it as possible, it is possible that our star system will be catapulted into intergalactic space.
2. If we are close enough to the collision the radiation, gamma rays from the two black holes going quasar will instantly destroy any atmosphere any of our star system planet has or will have. The planets will toast.
So it seems that even if we leave our star system in search of a safe place, then that safe place can not possibly be in our own galaxy. And of course not in Andromeda galaxy.
It seems that even if we calculate at which place we will be at the exact time of the two galaxies colliding, our fate is to leave our Milky Way galaxy. By natural means or not.
I won't go into sci-fi of humanity leaving our galaxy on intergalactical star ships, but my question for space scientists here - how will it effect the stability of our own star system if we're thrown out of our galaxy at an increasing speed?

p.s. I have another question that may require a new thread, but alas.. -> what happens to the initial black hole when it is swallowed by another black hole?
Do the singularities merge? Can it be observed from inside the singularity?
The cross section for collisions of colliding galaxies is such that few, if any, actual collisions will occur. As the masses attract each other, if they attract each oher, there will be few if any measurable trajectory perturbations. There will be few if any two body black-hole conditions that can be considered in isolation, such that one need only consider the attracting fields of the two stellar objects under scrutiny.

Assume that two identical black holes (as of this moment black holes have not been unambiguously identified) are moving toward each other on a common line. Each BH is 10x the volume of our sun, or bigger. When the force of attraction of each becomes amplified and the velocity near the speed of light, what do you think will happen?
I say the universe around the collision point will be a very dusty place with a lot of expended small sized blast material moving hither and yon.

Your words that our solar sustem will be cast into integalactic space are not supported with any scientific reasoning or experimental data. You must first determine the gravitational effect of multiple collisions, or trajectory perturbations separated by huge distances and unambiguously answer the questions of just what gravity physically is. Newton's force equations tells us nothing of the underlying physics and dynamics of gravity. You are a long way from telling us a another story of our final doom that contains any rational content. You write fiction, and then not even science fiction.

Geistkiesel

As for our solar system being cast into intergalctic space, that is not an idea by me and you are wrong to say that it is not suported by any scientific reasoning.
The theory is that by Prof. John Dubinski (University of Toronto) and he has done computer calculations and simulations of the event. I heard of this possibility from him in a BBC Horizon series film about Supermassive Black Holes.

I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and CITA working on a variety of topics in galaxy formation and dynamics. My research interests focus on the connections between cosmology and galactic dynamics. A detailed understanding of the structural and dynamical properties of galaxies can lead to a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that formed galaxies in the first place and are still shaping them today.
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/

Besides I didn't say that it will be cast, I said that it may be cast. No simulation as of yet is 100% precise.

Here is a html by him on the subject -> http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/tflops/

life on Earth will have become untenable before then, in around 1 to 1.5 billion years, because of increased solar temperature.Yes, it is true about the Earth, but not about our star system as a whole. As you see I haven't mentioned our specific planet anywhere. The habitable zone then will be further away from the centre of it (our system).In five billion years the Sun will swell so much that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and Earth. It's radiation will go up 2,000 times, stripping the envelopes from the gas giants and leaving only their rocky cores behind. Pluto will be hotter than Earth is now. Being made mostly of ices, it will evaporate.

Ophiolite is correct, including the rest of the solar system as a whole.

As for our solar system being cast into intergalctic space, that is not an idea by me and you are wrong to say that it is not suported by any scientific reasoning.
The theory is that by Prof. John Dubinski (University of Toronto) and he has done computer calculations and simulations of the event. I heard of this possibility from him in a BBC Horizon series film about Supermassive Black Holes.



Besides I didn't say that it will be cast, I said that it may be cast. No simulation as of yet is 100% precise.
Avatar, I didn't read the Dubinski paper but I did scan the headings thatincluded dark matter which is purley theoretical at the present time and has not been obserfved directly. Ferom this we maysay at a minimum he Dubinski thesis i pure speculation.

I can only report a computer analysis by an aeronautical engneer at Univ. Texas. His program shows the motion of objects in gravity free zone when perturbed. He expanded his model to show the trajectories of three stellar bodies located aribitrarilly wrt each other. When the objects got close enough for gravitaional effects to operate a consistent result always occured. Two of the objects always were trasformed into orbits around each other, the third object mrely passed by the two orbitng objects in a sling shot trajectory. There were no collisions.
School of Auronautical Engineering, UT , Austin , Yexas NAme forgotten
Geistkiesel

Maddat: If so, that doesn't change the fact that in 5 (or 3) billion years, we will be safer in another galaxy.

geistkiesel: Does that apply to any gravity the objects ummm hold? These are galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centre, that's pretty extreme.
And even if the galaxies won't merge it's possible the black holes go quasar and us being at the outer reaches of our own galaxy can be gamma toasted (depends where Andromeda will pass if it doesn't merge).

p.s. I'm not a doomsday fanboy, the universe is life and death, nothing wrong with it.

So you are saying that the galaxies won't collide although one has less mass and thus its' gravitational pull is weaker than that of ours (we being the prime pullers).
Ok that is your claim and I register it next to mine.

p.p.s. About dark matter, we haven't seen it, but we know it's there somewhere. Of course it's well possible that it isn't distributed inside galaxies. I agree with that weakness in Dubinski's model. Maybe he should have one without dark matter.

!!!p.s. I just remembered (doh) that even if our galaxies don't merge (Andromeda+MW) there are pretty much other that have (telescope data). Our own galaxy has merged with a small other galaxy in the past. (or so do astronomers tell).
So that's entirely possible.

http://www.skyimagelab.com/mice.html -> HUBBLE image -> http://store1.yimg.com/I/skyimage_1827_17433561
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/arp270/
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990101.html
http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~amr/mergers.html
http://www2.ifa.hawaii.edu/newsletters/article.cfm?a=187&n=18
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/models/models.html


So, are you still saying that galaxies don't collide and/or merge?

Maddat: If so, that doesn't change the fact that in 5 (or 3) billion years, we will be safer in another galaxy.How can you be safer when you will not be here?

As long as I know the first steerable aircraft of this civilization was invented in 1911. Measely 60 years later people of this civilization stepped on the moon of their planet. Given 1 billion years of development I see no problems for us to be potentially able to go to other star systems @ reasonable speeds or even leave our galaxy.

And I didn't say "I", I said "we", we - the mankind.

From what I've read on various sites, in a few hundred years, interplanetary travel will be commonplace, ventures to other stars will take place. In many thousands of years, we may have intergalactic capability, assuming we manage to stay alive and technologically innovative, likely with the population of humans that would be in existence. Where the hell will we be if we survive to a million years? Let alone a billion. Other universes? Building universes? I think the galaxies colliding will be the least of our interests. The end of the universe may even be cheatable at that point.

Restaurant at the end of the Universe ;)
/laughs and hints/

As long as I know the first steerable aircraft of this civilization was invented in 1911. Measely 60 years later people of this civilization stepped on the moon of their planet. Given 1 billion years of development I see no problems for us to be potentially able to go to other star systems @ reasonable speeds or even leave our galaxy.

And I didn't say "I", I said "we", we - the mankind.Species last a million to ten millon years. You, or we, will not have to worry about anything a billion years from now. We won't be here.

None other species before (at least to our knowledge) have had the ability to change their DNA. We have the ability, we can cheat (the speed of) evolution.

None other species before (at least to our knowledge) have had the ability to change their DNA. We have the ability, we can cheat (the speed of) evolution.
If we can change our DNA, our species (as such) will last a shorter period before evolving, not a longer.

Perhaps the human genome will persist in some data bank somewhere millions of years from now, marked with a skull and crossbones...

You seem to skip the idea of what evolving is -> it is getting best suited/adjusted to the outer environment (atmpsphere,food,other predators, etc).
Evolution is not needed if there is no change. But if our climate fast-changes some time in the future, with custom evolution we may save many lives if not our entire species.

I think eburacum is making the point that if we evolve significantly we will no longer be homo sapiens.

Is that important? I think the continuity of our historical heritage is important, not what species we are called, be it homo electronicus or homo nanocellitus later.