While you’re reading this, the universe is basically throwing the most epic crash party imaginable, with galaxies, stars, and planets smashing into each other at speeds that would make “The Fast and the Furious” look like a leisurely Sunday drive. These are some of the crazy things happening out there right this second, while most humans are none the wiser.
1. The Milky Way and Andromeda are playing the slowest game of chicken ever.
Our galaxy is currently racing toward the Andromeda Galaxy at about 250,000 mph, which sounds fast until you realise they won’t actually collide for another 4.5 billion years. It’s similar to watching slow motion footage, except the “slow motion” lasts longer than Earth has existed.
When they do finally crash, it’ll be the most spectacular merger in our cosmic neighbourhood, creating a new super-galaxy that astronomers have already nicknamed “Milkomeda.” The collision won’t destroy Earth, but our night sky will look completely different as the two galaxies spiral together in a cosmic dance.
2. Our solar system is constantly getting bombarded by space rocks.
Right now, hundreds of meteoroids are burning up in Earth’s atmosphere every hour, creating shooting stars that most people don’t even notice during the day. Most of these are tiny, about the size of a grain of sand, but they’re travelling at speeds of up to 160,000 mph when they hit our atmosphere.
Bigger chunks hit Earth regularly too, though most land in oceans or remote areas where nobody notices. Every day, about 100 tons of space material falls to Earth, ranging from cosmic dust to rocks the size of basketballs, making our planet slightly heavier with each passing day.
3. Jupiter is acting as a cosmic vacuum cleaner.
Jupiter’s massive gravity is constantly sucking up comets and asteroids that would otherwise potentially hit Earth, essentially acting as our solar system’s bodyguard. This giant planet gets smacked by space rocks regularly, and we can sometimes see the impact scars as dark spots on its surface.
The most famous recent hit was in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart and crashed into Jupiter in a series of impacts that were visible from Earth. Without Jupiter’s protective influence, Earth would get hit by asteroids way more often, possibly preventing complex life from ever evolving.
4. The sun is eating itself from the inside out.
Deep in the sun’s core, hydrogen atoms are constantly smashing together so violently that they fuse into helium, releasing the energy that keeps us warm and alive. This nuclear fusion is essentially a controlled collision happening 600 million tons per second, turning matter into pure energy.
Every second, the sun converts about 4 million tons of its own mass into energy, meaning it’s literally getting lighter as it burns. This has been going on for 4.6 billion years and will continue for another 5 billion years before the sun runs out of hydrogen fuel.
5. Neutron stars are crashing and creating gold.
When two neutron stars spiral into each other and collide, they create explosions called kilonovae that are so powerful they forge heavy elements like gold, platinum, and uranium. These collisions happen somewhere in the universe roughly once every 10,000 years, and each one produces more gold than exists in Earth’s entire crust.
The gold in your jewellery was literally created by neutron stars exploding billions of years ago and scattering their stellar guts across space. Every time two of these ultra-dense stars collide, they’re essentially minting new precious metals on a cosmic scale.
6. Black holes are having the ultimate food fight.
Supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies regularly collide when their host galaxies merge, creating gravitational waves that ripple through space-time itself. These collisions are so violent that they literally shake the fabric of the universe, and we can now detect these ripples using incredibly sensitive instruments.
When black holes merge, they create even more massive black holes and release more energy in gravitational waves than all the stars in the observable universe produce in light. It’s like the universe’s most destructive demolition derby, except the cars are objects so dense that nothing can escape them.
7. Comets are constantly crashing into the sun.
The sun’s gravity regularly captures comets that get too close, and these dirty snowballs from the outer solar system dive straight into our star at speeds of over 400 miles per second. Most of these “sungrazer” comets are completely vaporised before they reach the sun’s surface, but larger ones can survive long enough to actually impact.
We can watch these cosmic crashes happen in real-time using solar observatories, and it’s estimated that comets hit the sun every few days. Each impact adds a tiny bit of material to the sun’s mass, though it’s like dropping a grain of sand into the ocean compared to the sun’s enormous size.
8. Asteroids are playing bumper cars in the asteroid belt.
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is like a cosmic demolition derby where space rocks are constantly smashing into each other, breaking apart, and creating new smaller asteroids. These collisions happen so frequently that the asteroid belt is essentially a giant grinding machine that’s been pulverising rocks for billions of years.
Every collision creates dust and debris that either gets swept up by planets or continues orbiting as tiny particles. Some of this debris eventually makes its way to Earth as meteorites, meaning you could theoretically find pieces of asteroid belt collisions in your backyard.
9. Solar wind is constantly crashing into planetary magnetic fields.
The sun is constantly blasting charged particles into space at over a million miles per hour, and these particles are slamming into planetary magnetic fields throughout the solar system right now. When this solar wind hits Earth’s magnetosphere, it creates the northern and southern lights as the particles collide with our atmosphere.
Other planets experience similar phenomena: Jupiter’s moons get bombarded so heavily that they have permanent auroras, and Mars gets hit directly since it doesn’t have a strong magnetic field to protect it. It’s like the entire solar system is under constant artillery fire from our own star.
10. Galaxies are merging all across the universe.
While we’re waiting for our collision with Andromeda, thousands of other galaxy mergers are happening throughout the universe right now. Telescopes can capture galaxies in various stages of collision, from first contact to final merger, showing us what our own cosmic crash will look like in the distant future.
These galactic pile-ups trigger massive bursts of star formation as gas clouds get compressed and heated, creating some of the most spectacular light shows in the universe. Each merger reshapes the cosmic landscape, turning two separate galaxies into one larger, more complex system with a completely different structure than either original galaxy.