For those eager to find out, the correct answer to the Landscape challenge #3 is D — the perfect venue to witness the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies coalescing into a new galaxy. And here is a fantastic preview of that intergalactic collision from astronomer John Dubinsky and composer John Kameel Farah.
“The harsh reality of the distant universe with all of its violent interactions seems remote from our human existence and all might seem to be quiet and normal in our home the Milky Way. But it seems likely that in a mere 3 billion years, our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda and the Milky Way will fall together and have a close collision. They will likely merge and be reborn as a single giant elliptical galaxy over the course of another billion years or so. How might this metamorphosis play out and what might you see if you looked up at night over the next 4 billion years!”
And I have to ask: can landscape architecture, whose mastery of time distinguishes it from architecture and most other related fields, concern itself with time scales in the billions?