Two galaxies are about to crash. Nobody gets hit.
Two galaxies are about to crash. Nobody gets hit.
Andromeda is barrelling towards us at around 110 kilometres per second. In roughly 4.5 billion years, it will begin merging with the Milky Way — two colossal spirals, each carrying hundreds of billions of stars, folding into one another.
And almost no stars will collide.
Here is the reason: space inside a galaxy is not like a crowded room. The gaps between individual stars are so vast that even in a full galactic merger, the odds of any two stars meeting are extraordinarily slim. The galaxies pass through each other more like two swarms of bees than two walls of bricks.
The result gets a name — Milkomeda. A whole new galaxy, sculpted by gravity, containing the descendants of both our stars and theirs.
And Andromeda is already visible to the naked eye, 2.5 million light-years out, quietly closing the distance.
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