In the universe, almost everything will either be swallowed by black holes, die in a star explosion, or be assimilated by other objects—that’s the process that formed Earth. NASA has been studying the possibility of two cosmic monsters colliding, but scientists cannot observe this regularly. On the other hand, theories about the Milky Way’s future are confirmed due to singularities’ trajectories, and what’s about to happen will cause a major impact on humanity’s legacy in the universe and leave no signs of what we’ve lived so far.
The Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the universe
The Milky Way is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, and it’s far from being one of the biggest. 100 galaxies were identified by NASA, and most of them are not culturally known, but the Andromeda Galaxy is, and it has been referenced through a variety of studies, movies, and television shows—it is in the imagination of those who dream about other galaxies.
The Andromeda Galaxy is considerably bigger than our stellar system, which has a diameter of 100,000 light-years, with a total diameter estimated to be 220,000 light-years. For years, the galaxies have been on a collision course, which will create a super-galaxy named ‘Milkomeda’, but this might be happening later than NASA expected.
The end will happen later than expected
After running the power of the gravitational pull of our ‘Local Group’ galaxies in 100,000 simulations using new data collected by the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes, NASA found there is about a 50% of chance of Andromeda and the Milky Way colliding in the next 10 billion years, but this won’t happen between 4 and 5 billion years. After the calculations were made, the scientists estimated a 2% chance of the catastrophic event happening in this period.
A merger between the two galaxies would destroy them both, and a new one would be born. The author of the research that disclosed the new date for the fusion, Carlos Frenk, a professor at Durham University in England, stated that a collision between galaxies creates ‘cosmic fireworks’, a result of the gas that’s attracted to the center of the merging point feeding the central black hole from the other galaxy, creating an enormous amount of radiation.
A third galaxy is involved in the delay of the merging process
One of the galaxies close to the Milky Way is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf galaxy containing a few billion stars. The LMC orbits our galaxy. Meanwhile, another galaxy called M33 is a satellite of Andromeda. Both LMC and M33 are supporting actors in our local group of galaxies, but they might be the heroes we never asked for.
Both star systems are slowing down the collision with their gravitational pull—the small LMC has its own, and it’s perpendicular to Andromeda, which changes the Milky Way’s motion enough to delay the merger in a couple of billion years. The lead author of the study, Dr. Till Sawala, explained the team ran thousands of simulations, which in over half of them predict the merger could occur in 8 to 10 billion years.
What’s next after the big merger?
Dr. Sawala explained that the collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy would most likely involve a strong starburst, during which many new stars would form. Events like this are followed by a period of intense radiation caused by the explosion of young stars and active supermassive black holes, which eventually shuts down the star formation completely. In a matter of billions of years, any traces of both galaxies will be erased from the universe, leaving only a ‘new’, super-galaxy.