> http://whyfiles.org/151hubble/images/cartwheel.jpg
>
> This picture shows what happened after two galaxies ran in to eachother. They think the one on the left was hit by one of the ones on the right, but they don't know which. But either way, to my point. If we found out that in about 500 years this was going to happen to our galaxy (that another galaxy was going to come crashing through it) what do you think would change? Would the world become more religious and just give up on finding a way out of the problem? Would we all band together and focus all our resources on to the space program? Would we ever even be told about it if the government found it out? Would we just give up? I'm curious as to your* opinions.
>
> *Only applies if I don't hate you.

I don't think anybody would care. A few months ago, an asteroid missed crashing into Earth by only a *very* small margin of time. This event had the potential to wipe out a major amount of life on our planet. It didn't even make front page news, either before or after the near miss.

Most people I spoke to about it had the attitude "Wow, that's really scary, really makes you think, ooh look at this football score on the next page." I am not sure whether this makes me admire the human race or despair of it.

Since there wasn't anything we could personally do to *prevent* the arrival of the massive cosmic death rock, I don't suppose it matters anyway.

If you tell people the galaxy is going to crash into another galaxy *tomorrow*, maybe they'll react in one or more of the ways you mention. 500 years? Nope. People, both individually and as nations, tend not to care about something bad that's guaranteed to happen in *fifty* years, let alone 500.

Brunnen-"it's not cynicism, it's realism"G