Journey to the Andromeda Galaxy

[Dreamtimer]

You don't have to go over there in order to be able to make calculations, Vern. We've got loads of optical telescopes and radio telescopes — even up in space, mounted on satellites — and we've got decades, nay, centuries of observations of the movement of celestial bodies. We can perform spectral analyses. We know and understand the laws of physics, and we know the effects of gravity. We understand the Doppler effect — redshift and blueshift — and we possess computers powerful enough to make calculations, reliably predict trajectories and present ample probable outcomes regarding things that we have insufficient data on.

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This is stuff that thousands of very thick books have been written about ever since the first observations of the stars began, thousands of years ago. And I am sorry to have say this, but had you taken out the time to learn about these things and to study the laws of physics instead of dismissing things with a childlike knee jerk, then you too would understand. The good news is that you can at least brush up on some of your understanding by consulting peer-reviewed and confirmed-accurate material about all of this stuff on the internet. I would suggest starting with Wikipedia. You may not get the complete picture this way — as I said, this takes years of study — but you will at least be able to grasp enough of it to understand the basics.

Dismissing established science with a knee jerk is easy, because then you don't have to think about it. But it's also a form of denial, exactly because you're running away from having to actually think about it.

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That's not truth-seeking, Vern. That's intellectual cowardice. And you're derailing this thread by trolling me. And you know it.

The Mayans observed the motions of the stars as did the ancient celts. This has been known for longer than we know. I think Fred's post in the Tartaria thread already answered your question, Vern. The meat of the Tartaria story rests on the maps which are flawed and incomplete and ignore vast known history.

We (the Milky Way) will merge with Andromeda and it will be a crazy mess with a resulting mega-galaxy that will have a very odd shape. There are other oddly shaped galaxies we've observed which are so formed due to having gone through such a process. The nice thing about having such a huge universe is that we can see both how things are formed, how they mature, and how they ultimately end.

We've been using tools since we've been humans, whatever variant you want to point to. And our modern tools are pretty kick-ass.