• Question: If it is possible for they Milky Way to collide with another galaxy. What will happen?

    Asked by Aj to Roisin, Mark on 11 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      This is definitely Mark’s area of expertise rather than mine, so I think I’ll leave the fine detail to him, but as far as I know, it is possible for galaxies to collide, which can lead to the galaxies merging, I imagine with a few explosions along the way! I don’t think we’re in danger of it happening to the Milky Way any time soon though.

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      Ahhh, spoiler alart: The Milky Way is on a collision course with Andromeda, which is the closest to us!

      Thankfully, it’s not going to happen for another 4,000,000,000 years, so we don’t have to worry about it.

      But when it does, the Earth should be fine. During a galaxy collision, not many stars hit into each other (because there’s actually a lot of empty space inside of galaxies). So we’ll probably just end up in a new, bigger galaxy.

      The night sky will totally change though, and our constellations will probably all change. And people will have a beautiful view at night. Here’s an image of a galaxy merger that we can see happening right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antennae_Galaxies Looks beautiful right?

      You can look up others if you want: Go to this website: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/ Click Hubble Studies on the top, and then click galaxy collisions.

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