Two galaxies are going to collide, and barely a scratch.
Two whole galaxies colliding — you'd expect carnage. Instead, get ready for the most anticlimactic cosmic smash in history. Andromeda is currently closing in on us at around 110 kilometres per second. In about 4.5 billion years, it will begin merging with the Milky Way. But here's the twist: stars are so extraordinarily far apart from one another that almost none will actually meet. The two galaxies pass through each other like two swarms of fireflies drifting together in a field — plenty of motion, almost no contact. What does change is the shape of everything. Both galaxies get torn into long trails of stars, eventually settling into one enormous elliptical galaxy. Scientists have already given it a name: Milkomeda. No explosion. No catastrophe. Just a slow, silent reshaping of two hundred billion stars. Follow Deep Field Vault for more of the universe as it actually is.