Will the Milky Way and Andromeda crash? Now scientists aren't so sure.-脚踏实地网

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Will the Milky Way and Andromeda crash? Now scientists aren't so sure.

时间：2025-06-15 21:52:20 来源：脚踏实地网

Astronomers have 关键字2believed for decades that the Milky Wayis on a collision course with our nearest big neighbor, Andromeda. They seemed all but certain the two galaxies were destined to smash in about 4 to 5 billion years, combining into one colossal galaxy in space.

In that scenario, the merger would trigger a riot of star birthsand deathsand maybe even thrust the suninto a different orbit. We were told all this was inevitable.

But new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescopeand the Gaia spacecraft, run by the European Space Agency, suggests that the future of Earth's home galaxy is not that cut and dried. The study, which relied on 100,000 computer simulations stretching 10 billion years into the future, appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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"Based on the best available data, the fate of our Galaxy is still completely open," the scientists wrote.

SEE ALSO: Astronomers saw one galaxy impale another. The damage was an eye-opener. Countless stars in the Andromeda galaxy

A close-up view of a prodigious number of stars in the Andromeda galaxy. Credit: NASA / ESA / B. Williams

The Milky Way and Andromeda are part of a clusterof about 100 galaxies, held together by gravity, known as the "local group." For more than a century, scientists have known Andromeda is creeping toward the Milky Way. That led many experts to believe a collision was unavoidable.

Turns out the future is much more murky.

The researchers ran computer simulations with 22 different variables that tested different possible routes for the galaxies, trying to predict where they would end up. Their study found that the two galaxies would remain in the same plane as they circle each other.

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"But this doesn't mean they need to crash," said Till Sawala, the lead author, who is based at University of Helsinki in Finland, in a statement. "They could still go past each other."

These are possible scenarios for a future encounter between Milky Way and Andromeda.

These are possible scenarios for a future encounter between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / DSS / Till Sawala / Joseph DePasquale

The researchers found that two other nearby galaxies — the Large Magellanic Cloudand Messier 33 — could have significant influence on whether the Milky Way and Andromeda ultimately collide. Though these galaxies are smaller, they have enough mass to tip the scale.

Here's where things get downright mind-blowing: When Messier 33, sometimes called M33 or the Triangulum galaxy, is included in the simulation, it makes a galactic merger morelikely. But the Large Magellanic Cloud, whose orbit intersects those of the Milky Way and Andromeda, makes it lesslikely.

In short, it's a real "will they, won't they?". With all of the data put together, the team arrived at a near-equal, 50-percent chance of the two galaxies hitting within the next 10 billion years. In about half of the possible outcomes tested, the two main galaxies skirted by each other, with a margin of 500,000 light-yearsbetween them or less: That's about five times the width of the Milky Way.