Zooming through time

Of the various filmed version of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, my favourite scenes are the time travel sequences. The time traveller sits in his time machine and we see the world moving quickly around him as he sits.

Far away, in the night a hazy spot slowly grows until we can make out another spinning spiral. It is the Andromeda Galaxy and it's on a collision course with our Milky Way.

The great alien spiral sails like a slender, well lit flying saucer into the plane of our own Milky Way edge on, spinning like a Ferris wheel, ploughing through and throwing off great streamers of star stuff. Both galactic disks distort and writhe around each other, only to fade away to a dull glow leaving behind only the glowing centers.

-- A Cosmic Season's Greetings
(3 million years per second)