It's a long time from now, but the look of our galaxy isn't very bright after knowing that we're going to collide with our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. It looks like in 4 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda are going to bump galaxy fists.
Astronomers working on the Hubble Space Telescope said the galaxies, located 2.5 million light-years from each other, will collide in 4 billion years.
"Because Andromeda is getting closer to us, astronomers have speculated for a long time whether it might collide with our Milky Way and whether the galaxies might merge together," said Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
"However, to know if this will in fact happen, it's necessary to know not only how Andromeda is moving in our direction, but also what its sideways motion is. Because that will determine whether Andromeda will miss us at a distance -- or whether it might be heading straight for us."
"However, to know if this will in fact happen, it's necessary to know not only how Andromeda is moving in our direction, but also what its sideways motion is. Because that will determine whether Andromeda will miss us at a distance -- or whether it might be heading straight for us."
Andromeda is on a crash course with us at around 250,000mph, it''ll push the sun farther from the center, which would definitely have indirect catastrophic results for us.
Via LA Times
