This is how the world will end

One thing about the NASA public relations department: it doesn’t overplay events.

Here’s today’s news release:

On Thursday, May 31, at 3:00 p.m. EDT NASA will host an informal discussion for the general public with astronomers about new Hubble Space Telescope observations that allow them to predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our entire galaxy, sun, and solar system.

By “next major cosmic event,” they’re talking about the end of the world. Many worlds, actually.

Using data from the Hubble space telescope, scientists apparently have determined the answer to the long standing question about whether the Andromeda galaxy will have a head-on collision with the Milky Way.

Bad news: The answer is “yes.”

It will happen billions of years from now but when it does, it will look something like this:

It will be an amazingly beautiful result, even if all life as we know it will be over.

(Visualization By : Frank Summers, Space Telescope Science Institute)