Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

What if someone told you that planet Earth originated in another Galaxy and that the Milky Way caught us up in a gravitational sweep? What if they told you that the climate cycles on planet Earth were largely due to this galactic collision? Sound crazy? Maybe not . . .

Hat tip to my colleague, Rick, who sent this to me.

From ViewZone.com:

Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.

Image (David Law/University of Virginia): A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a — NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow dot) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

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It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.

Watch the animation and read about other effects being observed in our solar system:

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