Astronomers discovered the Andromeda galaxy (M31) hundreds of years ago. It wasn’t until about 100 years ago that astronomers discovered that the galaxy had a negative radial velocity as it approached the Milky Way. This means that the two galaxies will collide and merge in the future. But many people wonder if the two galaxies will collide in a big way?

Recently, researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland presented a multi-factorial analysis including the gravitational influence of other galaxies. Our local galaxy group consists of about 100 smaller galaxies with different directions, distances and velocities. Specifically, galaxy M33 is 2.7 million light years away and is home to more than 40 billion stars. This removes the simple transition between Andromeda and the Milky Way. There is also a galaxy called the Magellanic Cloud. The Milky Way’s satellites are only 163,000 light-years apart and contain about 20 billion stars Even though they are smaller than M33, the Magellanic Cloud still dominates the path between Galaxies and the M33

Calculations found that there is only a 50% chance that the Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda Galaxy in the next 10 billion years.

Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger