{"id":215589,"date":"2025-06-07T17:02:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T22:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/astronomers-thought-the-milky-way-was-doomed-to-crash-into-andromeda-now-theyre-not-so-sure"},"modified":"2025-06-07T17:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T22:02:59","slug":"astronomers-thought-the-milky-way-was-doomed-to-crash-into-andromeda-now-theyre-not-so-sure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/astronomers-thought-the-milky-way-was-doomed-to-crash-into-andromeda-now-theyre-not-so-sure","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers thought the Milky Way was doomed to crash into Andromeda. Now they\u2019re not so sure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-thought-the-milky-way-was-doomed-to-crash-into-andromeda-now-theyre-not-so-sure.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For years, astronomers have predicted a dramatic fate for our galaxy: a head-on collision with Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor. This merger\u2014expected in about 5 billion years\u2014has become a staple of astronomy documentaries, textbooks and popular science writing.<\/p>\n<p>But in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41550-025-02563-1\" target=\"_blank\">our new study<\/a> published in <i>Nature Astronomy<\/i>, led by Till Sawala from the University of Helsinki, we find the Milky Way\u2019s future might not be as certain previously assumed.<\/p>\n<p>By carefully accounting for uncertainties in existing measurements, and including the gravitational influence of other nearby galaxies, we found there is only about a 50% chance the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in the next 10 billion years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For years, astronomers have predicted a dramatic fate for our galaxy: a head-on collision with Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor. This merger\u2014expected in about 5 billion years\u2014has become a staple of astronomy documentaries, textbooks and popular science writing. But in our new study published in Nature Astronomy, led by Till Sawala from the University [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}