The Milky Way might not crash into Andromeda after all

For years, astronomers have believed that the fate of the Milky Way was tied to our largest neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy. However, a new … The post The Milky Way might not crash into Andromeda after all appeared first on BGR.

Jun 3, 2025 - 22:00

The Milky Way might not crash into Andromeda after all

For years, astronomers have believed that the fate of the Milky Way was tied to our largest neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy. However, a new study now says that this future Milky Way merger might not be as certain as scientists previously assumed.

Astronomers have believed that the fate of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy were tied together for over a century. Years ago, astronomers discovered that the Andromeda galaxy was steadily moving toward our own. While they used the radial velocity of the larger galaxy to determine this, they didn’t properly take Andromeda’s transverse velocity into account, this new study claims.

While radial velocity is key to determining how a galaxy is moving forward, the transverse motion helps determine the sideways drift that the galaxy experiences. Previous research into the impending merger assumed that Andromeda’s transverse motion was small, making the potential for a Milky Way merger much higher. But the newest findings suggest otherwise.

It’s important to note that the researchers behind this new study, which is published in Nature Astronomy, aren’t coming to this conclusion because of shiny, new data that nobody else has. Instead, they say that they’ve simply taken a fresh perspective at the data by looking at existing observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the now-retired Gaia mission.

But unlike the previous research that has looked at this same data, the researchers now aren’t assuming anything. Instead, they’re letting the uncertainty of the measurements play a part in their findings. After simulating thousands of possible trajectories for both galaxies, they determined that a Milky Way and Andromeda merger isn’t guaranteed by any means.

Of course, it’s still entirely possible, and half of the simulations showed a merger between the two neighboring galaxies. However, the other half of those simulations didn’t show any signs of merging for the next 10 billion years. Without any exact measurements for transverse velocity, though, this is all just theoretical.

That said, it does raise more questions about the ever-changing state of our universe, as well as how we approach understanding that state. Galaxy mergers happen all the time, so it isn’t out of the question. However, when we assume that we have all the data, we’re just as likely to find false results as if we didn’t take the data into account at all.

So, while we don’t have a definitive answer about whether or not the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will one day merge, we at least know that there are other possibilities out there. Whether or not humanity lives long enough to confirm these theories is an entirely different matter, though.

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The Milky Way might not crash into Andromeda after all originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 3 Jun 2025 at 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.