The Stars Are Beginning To Go Out…

"So we live at an interesting time, at the cusp between exuberant excess and a long gentle decline. We also happen to live in a galaxy that still produces a few stars a year – the Milky Way is going to end up contributing nicely to that last 5%. And when the Andromeda galaxy comes lumbering into us in 4 or 5 billion years time there may be a sudden burst of new star formation as these two beasts merge, and a final sprinkling of new stellar beacons will – for a time – light the cosmos a little more." Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary Astrobiology Center.