WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all.’
A titanic cosmic collision between the Milky Way and its closest large galactic neighbor, Andromeda, may not be as sure a thing as scientists thought.
Previously, it had been proposed that there was a good chance that Andromeda and our galactic home, which are moving together, would meet in around 5 billion years and merge to form a daughter galaxy dubbed “Milkomeda.”
New research has revealed that there is a much smaller chance that these two spiral galaxies will slam into each other and merge over the next 10 billion years than was believed. In fact, it’s about 50/50.
If in five billion years, we can’t come up with a better name than Milkomeda, why even bother going on?