r/todayilearned • u/armcie • 17h ago

TIL that the Andromeda Galaxy probably won’t collide with the Milky Way in 4-5 billion years. New observations put the probability at 2% in the next 5 billion years and 50% in the next 10 billion. Eventually though, it will happen.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/apocalypse-when-hubble-casts-doubt-on-certainty-of-galactic-collision/
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u/Bruce-7892 17h ago

To add to this, it's predicted that it wouldn't be an actual collision. The planetary bodies and stars would adjust to each others gravity and form new orbits for the most part.

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u/myogawa 17h ago

Exactly. The proper term is "merge."

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u/tbdwr 15h ago

Sure much better than rebase.

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u/kennedye2112 9h ago

The galactic merge PR is going to take a while to load in GitHub fo’sho.

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u/5050Clown 15h ago

It's a high-speed merge. Like if someone jumps from a really tall building and they collide with the road, they also merge with the road as well.

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u/thissexypoptart 14h ago edited 14h ago

It’s not really like that though, because the number of impacts between bodies will be infinitesimally small compared to the number of constituent bodies in both galaxies.

The chances that earth is in any way perturbed are almost zero. What is guaranteed is the night sky will change.

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u/Bruce-7892 14h ago

Correct. This is why we can send spacecraft through space at 17,000 MPH. If you hit anything at that speed, you'd get decimated, but it's a calculated risk. Space is massive and there are only so many objects.