PARIS, June 2, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The Milky Way may not have a catastrophic 
collision with another huge galaxy as has been predicted, computer 
simulations revealed Monday, giving our home galaxy a coin-flip chance of 
avoiding destruction.

But don't worry either way: no galactic smash-up is expected for billions of 
years, long after our ageing Sun will have burnt away all life on Earth.

The Milky Way and the even-larger galaxy Andromeda are speeding towards each 
other at 100 kilometres (60 miles) a second, and scientists have long 
predicted they will collide in around 4.5 billion years.

That would be bad news for our neighbourhood.

Previous research has suggested that the Sun -- and our Earth -- could wind 
up in the centre of this newly merged "Milkomeda" galaxy and get sucked into 
its supermassive black hole. Alternatively, the Sun could be shot out into 
the emptiness of intergalactic space.

However "proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly 
exaggerated", according to a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy.

There is only a roughly 50 percent chance the Milky Way and Andromeda will 
smash into each other in the next 10 billion years, the international team of 
astrophysicists determined.

"It's basically a coin flip," lead study author Till Sawala of the University 
of Helsinki told AFP.

The researchers ran more than 100,000 computer simulations of our universe's 
future, using new observations from space telescopes.

A galaxy merger in the next five billion years is "extremely unlikely", 
Sawala said.

Much more likely is that the galaxies will zoom relatively close to each 
other -- say, a little under 500,000 light years away.

In only half of the simulations did dark matter then eventually drag the two 
galaxies together into a cataclysmic embrace.

But this would likely only occur in around eight billion years -- long after 
our Sun has died, the researchers found.

"So it could be that our galaxy will end up destroyed," Sawala said.

"But it's also possible that our galaxy and Andromeda will orbit one another 
for tens of billions of years -- we just don't know."

- Galaxy's fate 'open' -

"The fate of our galaxy is still completely open," the study summarised.

The researchers emphasised that their findings did not mean that previous 
calculations were incorrect, just that they had used newer observations and 
taken into account the effect of more satellite galaxies.

Future data releases from Europe's recently retired Gaia space telescope as 
well as Hubble could provide a definitive answer to this question within the 
next decade, Sawala predicted.

How much all this all matters to us is a matter of debate. The Sun is 
expected to make Earth inhospitable to life in around a billion years.

"We might have some emotional attachment" to what happens after we're gone, 
Sawala said.

"I might prefer the Milky Way not to collide with Andromeda, even though it 
has absolutely no relevance to my own life -- or the lives of my children or 
great-great grandchildren."