For decades , astronomers have predicted that , in approximately 4.5 billion years , our coltsfoot will immix with the nearby Andromeda galaxy in a massive collision that will dramatically remold our immediate cosmic neighborhood . But what if this ill-starred clash is n’t inevitable and each wandflower will remain intact ?
premature research suggested that theupcoming hit between the two galaxieswas inevitable , but a new report claim there ’s a 50 % chance the Milky Way could narrowly avoid Andromeda . Thestudy , available on the preprint server arXiv , question the sure thing of a galactic collision , as hinted by its title : “ Apocalypse When ? ” The paper is currently undergoing match review .
For more than a century , scientists have observed the Andromeda galaxy , which is located 2.5 million lite - years off , slowly snarf up on the Milky Way in what has been foretell to result in a nous - on collision . “ The cosmos is expanding and accelerating , and collisions between galaxies in close law of proximity to each other still happen because they are bind by the sobriety of the drab matter surround them,”accordingto NASA .
An illustration of the predicted merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda.NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger
In 2021 , NASA ’s Hubble scope captured images of hotshot in Andromeda , which scientists then psychoanalyse to ascertain that the galaxy is moving towards the Milky Way at a swiftness of 250,000 miles per hour . From there , scientists claimed they could prefigure with certainty the principal - on encounter scheduled in about 4 billion years . At the time , computer simulation propose that it would take an additional two billion years for thetwo galaxies to amply merge with each other and reshape into one elliptical galaxy , with our solar system fling into a totally new region in relation to the galactic core .
The researcher behind the new written report , co - authored by Till Sawala , an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki , used recent observations from the Gaia and Hubble telescopes to analyze the movement and mass of the largest Galax urceolata in the Local Group : Andromeda ( the large ) , the Milky Way , Triangulum , and the heavy Magellanic Cloud . The squad then plugged those calculation into a simulation that predicted the galaxies ’ evolution over the next 10 billion age .
Through the simulations , the squad find out that the Milky Way and Andromeda only merged in slightly less than half of the scenarios . “ As it fend , proclamations of the impending demise of our Galaxy appear greatly exaggerated , ” the researchers wrote in the bailiwick .
The study also suggests that coming Gaia data point will further refine mensuration of the motion and mass of Local Group Galax urceolata , and that more work is required before the fortune of our galactic neighborhood can truly be determined .
More : stargazer Find the Edge of Our Galaxy
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