Violent Galactic Clash May Solve Cosmic Mystery 56
astroengine writes "The mother of all cosmic collisions has been spotted between two galaxies containing a total of 400 billion stars, igniting the birth of 2,000 new stars per year! This incredible event was first spotted by the recently-retired Herschel infrared space observatory (abstract), a mission managed by the European Space Agency. This violent discovery isn't just awesome to look at, it could also help explain how massive, red elliptical galaxies evolved in the early universe."
Re:Think of the aliens (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Think of the aliens (Score:3, Informative)
All you need is something massive to move through the asteroid belt for a number of asteroids to get scattered across our solar system like someone breaking open a game of pool. The net result is that one of those astroids will hit likely hit us or hopefully the moon.
You'd also be assuming that the moons orbit doesnt change drastically. That may have some fundamental change in forces which might not affect the oceans but it would most likely result in a large number of earthquakes as the system tries to find some new balance between the new orbit and the internal spin of the earth vs the crust.