The two galaxies will eventually merge and take shape over a period of millions of years, forming into a larger spiral or possibly elliptical galaxy. On the other hand if our solar system was thrown far from the center into the tidal tails created by the collision we could watch the new galaxy take shape from a safe distance, if humans are still around in 3 billion years that is. With so much material flying around Earth could be knocked off orbit or blasted by a nearby supernova explosion. The hope for our solar system would be that it wouldn’t be anywhere near the center of the newly forming galaxy, that would be a very dangerous place to be.
The supermassive black holes that exist at the centers of these two galaxies will find their way to the core, joining to form a black hole that would be tens of millions of times more massive than our sun. As the galaxies interact the heat generated will create a burst of new star formation with possibly millions of new stars being born. Instead star systems will either be flung out into interstellar space or sent towards the newly forming core. Due to the effects of gravity the Milky Way and our nearest galactic neighbor Andromeda are hurtling towards one another at the rate of 270,000 miles (435,000 km) per hour and are due to collide in around 3 billion years.Īlthough the galaxies will collide the stars inside will not, the distances between stars makes that highly unlikely. In fact our very own Milky Way is a product of smaller dwarf galaxies merging to form a larger one.
Galaxies colliding with each other is a very common event in our Universe. The Antennae galaxies, two separate galaxies in the process of merging.
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