Sometimes I just want to unleash my inner eight-year-old and destroy something.

Just pick it up and smash it.

Maybe to see what it looks like on the inside, maybe to see how it works, maybe just because

I feel like it, and that's

valid enough reason. So since I'm in a smashing mood today, I thought it would be fun to destroy

a galaxy. That's right, a galaxy. I mean, if we're going to destroy something, we might as well

go big, right? And we've blown up stars

and dismantled planets before in previous episodes, so that's no fun anymore. We're going to do

everything we can to fully. And I mean totally and completely and utterly destroy a galaxy.

As you know, galaxies are kind of large and kind of complex places. A typical

galaxy will be home to anywhere from 100 million stars on the small side to trillions of stars on the

large side. Our own Milky Way galaxy has about 300 to 500 billion stars, while our neighbor Andromeda has around a trillion.

Galaxies have a range of sizes. The smallest ones are hard to distinguish from dwarf galaxies,

which deserve an episode in their own right, so go ahead and ask.

So we'll go ahead and put ranges anywhere from 10-ish thousand light years across to a few

hundred thousand light years across on the side for anything for galaxy scale.

They come in all sorts of shapes in addition to all sorts of sizes.

In addition to all sorts of sizes, they also come in all sorts of different shapes.

You have the beautiful spirals, the boring ellipticals, the ugly irregulars.

But a galaxy beauty contest is, as you guessed it, another episode.

Because today, we are focused on smashing.

But if we're going to destroy a galaxy, we're going to have to contend with more than just stars.

...