Not Andromeda, but the Milky Way will smash into a dwarf galaxy in 2 billion years

The Milky Way will not exist in its current form some day, a scenario that was expected to unfold in about 5 billion years. However, a new study suggests that this could happen a lot earlier, in about 2 billion years. In fact, the culprit won't be Andromeda, but a dwarf irregular galaxy.

Scientists have long theorised that our galaxy will merge with Andromeda, resulting in the creation of a new galaxy called “Milkomeda.”

An international team of researchers has found that while the chances of the Milky Way and Andromeda colliding are less as compared to previous estimates, there is another collision that is almost certain to happen in the next two billion years - one of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud smashing into each other.

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Researchers from Durham University dug into the probability of a Milky Way and Andromeda merger. After running 100,000 simulations, they found that there is a 50-50 chance of a collision occurring between the Milky Way and Andromeda. There is still no clarity on whether Earth will survive this event, if it is still around till that time.

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This is when they also discovered that our galaxy might face the same fate, but at the hands of another, smaller galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

Why will the Milky Way and Andromeda not collide?

Andromeda is about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, and both of them can collide, travelling at a speed of 354,000 kilometres per hour (km/h). The results can be devastating for Earth and the other planets, besides the billions of other stars in the two galaxies.

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The researchers took data from the Gaia and Hubble telescopes and ran simulations about the movement of our galaxy in the next 10 billion years. They also looked at the other galaxies that sit inside the Local Group, a region where several galaxies reside along with the Milky Way and Andromeda.

“We found that uncertainties in the present positions, motions and masses of all galaxies leave room for drastically different outcomes and a probability of close to 50% that there will be no Milky Way–Andromeda merger during the next 10 billion years," the authors wrote.

They state that the previous studies failed to account for the gravitational pull of the Triangulum galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. "The orbit of the Large Magellanic Cloud runs perpendicular to the Milky Way–Andromeda orbit and makes their merger less probable,” they explained.

Scientists admit that it isn't possible to be fully sure about how the Milky Way will move in the coming years since space is full of uncertainties. They will continue to look at data taken by Gaia to understand more about it.