Humanity tends to think about hypothetical events that could happen in space in billions of years. One of these is the possibility of a collision of two galaxies – Andromeda and the Milky Way – in 5 billion years (PBS Space Time, 2018). This question was raised even centuries ago by the philosopher Immanuel Kant who supposed that another galaxy of stars could exist (PBS Space Time, 2018). In the contemporary world, scientists have already predicted some events that will take place after the collision. In the expected scenario, two galaxies will collide and form a supermassive black hole.
Although modern research is sure that the predictions are correct, it took some time for some generations of scholars to figure out this mechanism. The reason is that before that, the prominent scholar Vesto Slipher claimed that the Andromeda galaxy had enough sideways and transverse velocity to miss Milky Way completely (PBS Space Time, 2018). In such a logic, the racing of the Andromeda with the speed of 110 kilometers per second could not bring any damage to our galaxy. However, the computational simulation of the convergence between Andromeda and the Milky Way showed that complete destruction is inevitable (PBS Space Time, 2018). The spiral structure of galaxies will be destructed, and the created tidal tails will form the supermassive black hole in the center of the new galaxy after six billion years (PBS Space Time, 2018). Concerning the solar system, by the point of collision, the supergiant sun will destroy the Earth and other planets (PBS Space Time, 2018). Because of the huge distances between them many systems will survive the collision, but there is still a tiny chance that some starts will collide with each other. It should be noted that these computer simulations were made in the 2010s.
Reference
PBS Space Time. (2018). The Andromeda-Milky Way collision [Video]. YouTube. Web.