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August 14, 2024
It’s long been assumed that our galaxy will, in about 4.5 billion years, “collide” with the Andromeda galaxy, merging and forming a new, gigantic galaxy. Here’s your arbitrary assurance that the collision will not affect the Solar System, or really any star in the Milky Way at all, besides Earth’s night sky perhaps. Not that that will matter to humans: If we’re still around, we or our descendants won’t be on Earth to see the spectacular view.
But the certainty of that epic astronomical event is being called into question. A new paper found only a 50% chance that the Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in the next 10 billion years. “That seems like a pretty big thing to get the physics wrong on,” as Phys.org notes, which I could not have said better myself. Why might the two galaxies not merge? To be brief, it’s because there are — shock! — other things in space besides them. There are approximately 100 smaller galaxies in the Local Group, each with billions and billions of stars and, thus, their own gravitational forces, which all push, pull and contort each other. There’s a possibility that all of the galaxies in the Local Group will eventually merge into one. That won’t happen for, like, 100 billion years, though.
With that, I remind myself, and you, of just how tiny and brief all our lives really are. And on that note, here’s some news from RTO Insider.
Keep looking up.
Michael Brooks |
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