A Possible Near Miss Between Our Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy!
Over a decade’s worth of Hubble Space Telescope data was used to re-examine the long-held prediction that the Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4.5 billion years. The astronomers found that, based on the latest observational data from Hubble as well as the Gaia space telescope, there is only a 50-50 chance of the two galaxies colliding within the next 10 billion years. The study also found that the presence of the Large Magellanic Cloud can affect the trajectory of the Milky Way and make the collision less likely. The researchers emphasize that predicting the long-term future of galaxy interactions is highly uncertain, but the new findings challenge the previous consensus and suggest the fate of the Milky Way remains an open question.
https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-017
9 Comments
Oh thank God! I can come back out of my bunker
Whew! Can mark that incident off of my calendar now.
The entire premise of several major sci-fi series eliminated just like that
Even if it misses they’ll still come back together after a couple more billion years
It’s just a shift of the timetable
Everything in the local group is gravitational bound and will merge at some point
But I already blew my life savings in anticipation of it!
Well, that’s one way to ruin my next 100 million reincarnation!
“Here’s one they just made up: “near miss”.
When two planes almost collide, they call it a near miss.
It’s a *near hit*!
A *collision* is a near miss!
BOOM! Look, they nearly missed. Yes, but not quite!”
– George Carlin
How about we simplify it a 3 body problem in galatic terms. Milky way & Andromeda & LMC
Looking forward to a post here next year saying actually new data says it will and this data wasn’t quite accurate and then a post a year later say actually it probably won’t and so forth.