Here’s some good news: Our galaxy may not be destined to end in a fiery collision with the Andromeda galaxy as soon as previously thought. While earlier research regarded the collision as a virtual certainty within five or six billion years, new research questions that.
The Andromeda Galaxy, a spiral galaxy also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is one of several galaxies, including the Milky Way, that comprise what is known as the Local Group. Astronomers have long known that Andromeda is on a collision course with the Milky Way. In 2012, data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope got more specific when it confirmed suspicions that the two galaxies are destined to collide in about four or five billion years.
But an analysis of new data from Hubble and the European Space Agency’s Gaia Space Telescope has caused researchers to question that time frame. According to Till Sawala, ...
