I think the concept of stars literally hitting each other is rather moot. As you’ve said, the chances are incredibly tiny… However, a star doesn’t have to literally collide with the sun to cause unfathomable damage and destuction.
A star coming closer than the ort cloud will mess up gravitational interactions, orbits, and rain down rocks/ice from the ort cloud.
I don’t know how much of that is factored into the “they won’t collide so don’t worry” formula/logic though
I think the concept of stars literally hitting each other is rather moot
In many ways, I agree with you. I was simply trying to paint a picture of how much space is in between stars. Visualizing the scale and distances of the universe can be extremely difficult, so I opened with that to help explain why the chances of collision or significant interaction were low. However, given amount of time involved, a significant interaction has probably happened before and may happen again. (Visualizing space and time is hard for me, actually.) With that, I should cap my improbability to “within the time that humanity has ever existed, or will ever exist”.
However, you did get me thinking about disruption on a much larger scale, far beyond the oort cloud. Could a cluster of black holes disrupt our orbit around the galaxy center significantly? Locally, even something of considerable size passing through our solar system can disrupt our own solar orbit, but may only measurable after thousands of years.
We are in a relatively quiet spot in our galaxy now from my own understanding, but if something was able to bump us (and hundreds of thousands of other stars) just a hair, it might have dire consequences in a few million years. (I wouldn’t imagine that we would notice getting kicked out of our own galaxy completely though. Dunno.)
I think the concept of stars literally hitting each other is rather moot. As you’ve said, the chances are incredibly tiny… However, a star doesn’t have to literally collide with the sun to cause unfathomable damage and destuction.
A star coming closer than the ort cloud will mess up gravitational interactions, orbits, and rain down rocks/ice from the ort cloud.
I don’t know how much of that is factored into the “they won’t collide so don’t worry” formula/logic though
In many ways, I agree with you. I was simply trying to paint a picture of how much space is in between stars. Visualizing the scale and distances of the universe can be extremely difficult, so I opened with that to help explain why the chances of collision or significant interaction were low. However, given amount of time involved, a significant interaction has probably happened before and may happen again. (Visualizing space and time is hard for me, actually.) With that, I should cap my improbability to “within the time that humanity has ever existed, or will ever exist”.
However, you did get me thinking about disruption on a much larger scale, far beyond the oort cloud. Could a cluster of black holes disrupt our orbit around the galaxy center significantly? Locally, even something of considerable size passing through our solar system can disrupt our own solar orbit, but may only measurable after thousands of years.
We are in a relatively quiet spot in our galaxy now from my own understanding, but if something was able to bump us (and hundreds of thousands of other stars) just a hair, it might have dire consequences in a few million years. (I wouldn’t imagine that we would notice getting kicked out of our own galaxy completely though. Dunno.)