{"id":152725,"date":"2025-06-02T18:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/152725\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T18:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:11:08","slug":"chance-of-milky-way-colliding-with-galaxy-in-billions-of-years-odds-now-50-50-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/152725\/","title":{"rendered":"Chance of Milky Way colliding with galaxy in billions of years? Odds now 50-50: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way<\/a> and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all.<\/p>\n

Astronomers reported Monday that the probability of the two spiral galaxies<\/a> colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That\u2019s essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy<\/a> seem greatly exaggerated,\u201d the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy.<\/p>\n

While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast may be moot for humanity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe likely won\u2019t live to see the benefit,” lead author Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki said in an email.<\/p>\n

Already more than 4.5 billion years old, the sun is on course to run out of energy and die in another 5 billion years or so, but not before becoming so big it will engulf Mercury, Venus and possibly Earth. Even if it doesn\u2019t swallow Earth, the home planet will be left a burnt ball, its oceans long since boiled away.<\/p>\n

Sawala\u2019s international team relied on the latest observations by NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia star-surveying spacecraft to simulate the possible scenarios facing the Milky Way and next-door neighbor Andromeda. Both already collided with other galaxies in their ancient past and, according to many, seemed destined for a head-on crash.<\/p>\n

Past theories put a collision between the two \u2014 resulting in a new elliptical galaxy dubbed Milkomeda \u2014 as probable if not inevitable. Some predictions had that happening within 5 billion years, if not sooner.<\/p>\n

For this new study, the scientists relied on updated galaxy measurements to factor in the gravitational pull on the Milky Way’s movement through the universe. They found that the effects of the neighboring Triangulum galaxy increased the likelihood of a merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda, while the Large Magellanic Cloud decreased those chances.<\/p>\n

Despite lingering uncertainty over the position, motion and mass of all these galaxies, the scientists ended up with 50-50 odds of a collision within the next 10 billion years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fate of our Milky Way galaxy is a subject of broad interest \u2014 not just to astronomers,\u201d said Raja GuhaThakurta of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study, <\/p>\n

A full-on collision, he noted, would transform our home galaxy from a disk of stars seen as a milky band of diffuse light across the sky into a milky blob. A harmless flyby of the two galaxies could leave this stellar disk largely undisturbed, thus preserving our galaxy’s name.<\/p>\n

More work is needed before the Milky Way\u2019s fate can be predicted with accuracy, according to the researchers. Further insight should help scientists better understand what’s happening among galaxies even deeper in the cosmos. <\/p>\n

While our galaxy\u2019s fate remains highly uncertain, the sun\u2019s future is \u201cpretty much sealed,” according to Sawala. \u201cOf course, there is also a very significant chance that humanity will bring an end to itself still much before that, without any need for astrophysical help.”<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[65073,7307,3907,901,74,70,413,7305,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-152725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-65073","9":"tag-aerospace-technology","10":"tag-article","11":"tag-astronomy","12":"tag-physics","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-space-exploration","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114615122861630498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}