NASA astronomers announced Thursday
they can now predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our
galaxy, sun, and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy
with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.
The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.
"Our findings are statistically
consistent with a head-on collision between the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky
Way galaxy," said Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science
Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.
The solution came through painstaking NASA Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the motion of Andromeda, which also is known as M31. The galaxy is now 2.5 million light-years away, but it is inexorably falling toward the Milky Way under the mutual pull of gravity between the two galaxies and the invisible dark matter that surrounds them both.
The solution came through painstaking NASA Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the motion of Andromeda, which also is known as M31. The galaxy is now 2.5 million light-years away, but it is inexorably falling toward the Milky Way under the mutual pull of gravity between the two galaxies and the invisible dark matter that surrounds them both.
The Andromeda Galaxy is
a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5
million light-years; 2.4×1019 km) from Earth in
the Andromeda constellation. Also known as Messier 31, M31,
or NGC 224, it is often referred to as the Great
Andromeda Nebula in older texts. The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest
spiral galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, but not thenearest
galaxy overall. It gets its name from the area of the sky in which it
appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which was named after the
mythological princess Andromeda. The Andromeda Galaxy is the
largest galaxy of the Local Group, which also contains the Milky
Way, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 44 other smaller galaxies.
The Andromeda Galaxy is probably the most massive
galaxy in the Local Group as well, despite earlier findings that suggested
that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and could be the most
massive in the grouping. The 2006 observations by theSpitzer Space Telescope revealed
that M31 contains one trillion (1012) stars: at least twice the
number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is estimated to be 200–400
billion.[
The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to
be 1.5×1012 solar masses, while the mass of the Milky Way is
estimated to be 8.5×1011 solar masses. In comparison a 2009 study
estimated that the Milky Way and M31 are about equal in mass, while a 2006
study put the mass of the Milky Way at ~80% of the mass of the Andromeda
Galaxy. The two galaxies are expected to collide in 3.75 billion
years, eventually merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy or
perhaps a large disk galaxy.
At 3.4, the apparent magnitude of the
Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest of any Messier
objects, making it visible to thenaked eye on moonless nights even
when viewed from areas with moderate light pollution. Although it appears
more than six times as wide as the full Moon when photographed
through a larger telescope, only the brighter central region is visible to
the naked eye or when viewed using binoculars or a small telescope.
"After nearly a century of speculation about
the future destiny of Andromeda and our Milky Way, we at last have a clear
picture of how events will unfold over the coming billions of years," said
Sangmo Tony Sohn of STScI.
The scenario is like a baseball batter watching an oncoming fastball. Although Andromeda is approaching us more than 2,000 times faster, it will take 4 billion years before the strike.
Computer simulations derived from Hubble's data show that it will take an additional two billion years after the encounter for the interacting galaxies to completely merge under the tug of gravity and reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly seen in the local universe.
Although the galaxies will plow into each other, stars inside each galaxy are so far apart that they will not collide with other stars during the encounter. However, the stars will be thrown into different orbits around the new galactic center. Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today.
To make matters more complicated, M31's small companion, the Triangulum galaxy, M33, will join in the collision and perhaps later merge with the M31/Milky Way pair. There is a small chance that M33 will hit the Milky Way first.
The scenario is like a baseball batter watching an oncoming fastball. Although Andromeda is approaching us more than 2,000 times faster, it will take 4 billion years before the strike.
Computer simulations derived from Hubble's data show that it will take an additional two billion years after the encounter for the interacting galaxies to completely merge under the tug of gravity and reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly seen in the local universe.
Although the galaxies will plow into each other, stars inside each galaxy are so far apart that they will not collide with other stars during the encounter. However, the stars will be thrown into different orbits around the new galactic center. Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today.
To make matters more complicated, M31's small companion, the Triangulum galaxy, M33, will join in the collision and perhaps later merge with the M31/Milky Way pair. There is a small chance that M33 will hit the Milky Way first.
The universe is expanding and accelerating, and
collisions between galaxies in close proximity to each other still happen
because they are bound by the gravity of the dark matter surrounding them. The
Hubble Space Telescope's deep views of the universe show such encounters
between galaxies were more common in the past when the universe was smaller.
A century ago astronomers did not realize that M31 was a separate galaxy far beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble measured its vast distance by uncovering a variable star that served as a "milepost marker."
Hubble went on to discover the expanding universe where galaxies are rushing away from us, but it has long been known that M31 is moving toward the Milky Way at about 250,000 miles per hour. That is fast enough to travel from here to the moon in one hour. The measurement was made using the Doppler effect, which is a change in frequency and wavelength of waves produced by a moving source relative to an observer, to measure how starlight in the galaxy has been compressed by Andromeda's motion toward us.
Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31’s tangential motion. Until now, astronomers had not been able to measure M31's sideways motion in the sky, despite attempts dating back more than a century. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way.
"This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the galaxy over a five- to seven-year period," said Jay Anderson of STScI.
"In the worst-case-scenario simulation, M31 slams into the Milky Way head-on and the stars are all scattered into different orbits," said Gurtina Besla of Columbia University in New York, N.Y. "The stellar populations of both galaxies are jostled, and the Milky Way loses its flattened pancake shape with most of the stars on nearly circular orbits. The galaxies' cores merge, and the stars settle into randomized orbits to create an elliptical-shaped galaxy."
A century ago astronomers did not realize that M31 was a separate galaxy far beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble measured its vast distance by uncovering a variable star that served as a "milepost marker."
Hubble went on to discover the expanding universe where galaxies are rushing away from us, but it has long been known that M31 is moving toward the Milky Way at about 250,000 miles per hour. That is fast enough to travel from here to the moon in one hour. The measurement was made using the Doppler effect, which is a change in frequency and wavelength of waves produced by a moving source relative to an observer, to measure how starlight in the galaxy has been compressed by Andromeda's motion toward us.
Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31’s tangential motion. Until now, astronomers had not been able to measure M31's sideways motion in the sky, despite attempts dating back more than a century. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way.
"This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the galaxy over a five- to seven-year period," said Jay Anderson of STScI.
"In the worst-case-scenario simulation, M31 slams into the Milky Way head-on and the stars are all scattered into different orbits," said Gurtina Besla of Columbia University in New York, N.Y. "The stellar populations of both galaxies are jostled, and the Milky Way loses its flattened pancake shape with most of the stars on nearly circular orbits. The galaxies' cores merge, and the stars settle into randomized orbits to create an elliptical-shaped galaxy."
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