Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending

NASA ^ | June 04, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home galaxy. Still, the errors in sideways velocity appear sufficiently large to admit a good chance that the central parts of the two galaxies will miss, slightly, but will become close enough for their outer halos to become gravitationally entangled. Once that happens, the two galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to become one large elliptical galaxy -- over the next few billion years. Pictured above is an artist's illustration of the sky of a world in the distant future when the central parts of each galaxy begin to destroy each other. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire surrounding Local Group of Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic of research for years to come.

[shibumi]

"The Milky Way has already collided with several other galaxies. Still here"


Yeah, but you should see what happened to the insurance rates.

[JRios1968]

[norwaypinesavage]

The NASA "Picture of the Day" is usually quite interesting and informative. This one is not. I fail to see how NASA can include "Pictured above is an artist's illustration" as a "picture". This is particularly confusing, since most of the "sideways" velocity responsible for the intersection is speculation, not observation.

[Caipirabob]

That’s an awful lot of space running smack dab into another whole lot of space...

[martin_fierro]

[bmwcyle]

I guess I have a long time to get ready.

[dr_lew]

OK, well you see there? I learned somethin’

“We’re all ignorant, just on different subjects” - Will Rogers