Andromeda Galaxy on Collision Course with Milky Way

A team with the Hubble Space Telescope have now confirmed what has long been suspected: The Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way.

Now before you begin making travel arrangements to the other side of the Universe, you should know that this is not going to happen for another 4 billion years.

But even then, there is little to suggest that Earth would be in any danger as there is a lot of empty space in galaxies, so unless we happened upon the central bulge of Andromeda we would probably be ok. (I should note that this is all academic anyway; as the Sun increases in brightness - as it has done, and will continue to do over its life time - the radiant energy will eventually make Earth too hot to support life; most likely before this collision occurs.)

These spiral galaxies - along with possibly the Triangulum Galaxy - will merge to form a new galaxy. Initially the new object would probably be classified as either a Peculiar or Irregular Galaxy. But researchers suggest that eventually the combination could form into an elliptical galaxy as it approaches a gravitational equilibrium of sorts.

Part of me wishes that this event was going to happen much sooner; it would be amazing to see the Andromeda galaxy hanging so brilliantly in the night sky.

Above Image: The Andromeda Galaxy dominates the night sky about 3.75 billion years from now. Image Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger.