Our Galaxy Is Likely To Avoid A Catastrophic Collision In The Next 5 Billion Years

The Milky Way and Andromeda are traveling towards each other; this is a fact that we have known for a long time. Over the decades, estimates of the speed and simulations have suggested that the two were going to collide within 5 billion years. But new research argues quite the opposite. A team found that there is about a 50 percent chance that the two galaxies will miss each other over the next 10 billion years.

A major merger is a collision between galaxies of roughly the same size. The end result is usually an elliptical galaxy, hardly resembling the progenitors, especially if they were spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda. The process is slow, so stars do not start smashing into one another, but many changes take place, new stars form, and supermassive black holes get activ