Milkomeda: Milky Way and Andromeda Might Collide, Leaving Us Without The Sun
Apparently, the Andromeda galaxy is located 2.5 million light-years from Earth – that’s 14,696,563,000,000,000,000 miles. However, astronomers are sure that it’s coming towards at a speed of around 68.3 miles – that’s 110 km – per second. If these two collide, they will merge into a larger elliptical body, which would be called Milkomeda.
But before these two galaxies collide, Gemma Lavender, astronomer, stated that the two bodies would most likely fly past each other without hitting. But the galaxies will pass close enough for their own gravities to damage each other. Researchers talked about this horrifying scenario.
Miss Lavender wrote that, in that specific case, two galaxies would start tearing each other off, ripping chunks out of each other, having their central bars destroyed, and their spiral arms twister.
Milky Way and Andromeda Might Collide, Leaving Us Without The Sun and Forming “Milkomeda”
There will also probably be a second close encounter, and then, the two disrupted galaxies will spin back around and fall into each other – their stars will become mingled. The molecular gas clouds would meet, and massive bursts of star formation will simply start burning. In more than hundreds of millions of years, these two galaxies will merge into one new giant galaxy, and its name would be Milkomeda.
The name is not that important; what’s important is that it might be the most fantastic event in the history of our galaxy. It’s not good news for us since this merging might get rid of our Sun, sending it out of the galaxy.
Let’s make a comparison: our solar system is placed about 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. If there’s this change of throwing the Sun out of Milkomeda, then we’ll spend the eternity in complete darkness, roaming around an intergalactic space. However, we won’t feel that because we’d be already extinct.
Doris’s passion for writing started to take shape in college where she was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. Even though she ended up working in IT for more than 7 years, she’s now back to what he always enjoyed doing. With a true passion for technology, Doris mostly covers tech-related topics.
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