Stars do Collide! And We Saw It!

When I do Planetarium shows, one of the things I like to talk about during the Milky Way – Andromeda collision that will happen in 70 Mlllion years, is the fact that very few stars will actually hit each other.  Yet we still call it a ‘Galaxy collision.’  One of the questions I always get is “Will the Earth survive this?”  I usually ask the audience. The response is usually a unanimous ‘No way!” And then I tell them how big Galaxies are and they can’t believe how unlikely it is that the solar system will be affected.  Consider the...