This Is How the Milky Way Will End

We've got about 4 billion years before the Milky Way galaxy is no more. We're on a collision course with our nearest neighbor, Andromeda, and now—thanks to researchers with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research—we have an updated idea what that galatic crash might look like.

In the video above researchers show a computer simulation of this perfectly natural aspect of life as a galaxy, says the Huffington Post. To be a galaxy is to grow and, occasionally, to eat or be eaten by other galaxies. 

Right now, says Nadia Drake for National Geographic, the Milky Way and Andromeda are roughly 2.5 million light-years apart. They're speeding toward each other at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour.

The collision will destroy the galaxies as we know them, but the components of those galaxies—the stars and planets and solar systems—may actually remain intact. Rather than an explosion, the collision will be more of a reconfiguration, says Drake. But don't worry, we'll likely all be long dead by then anyway.

Colin Schultz | | READ MORE

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.