The Milky Way and its neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, are directed towards each other and for years it was thought that their end would end up being a clash, but new calculations reduce that possibility to 2% in the next 5,000 million years.
An investigation that Public Nature Astronomy examined recent data from the Hubble, NASA, and Gaia, of the European Space Agency, of the European Space Agency, to carry out more than 100,000 simulations, with variables that had not been taken into account before.
Thus, they traced the future, in the next 10,000 million years of the Milky Way and Andromeda, which currently run one towards the other at a speed of about 100 kilometers per second and a collision would be devastating for both
The study, signed by researchers from the universities of Helsinki, Durham (United Kingdom) and Toulouse (France), indicates that, in any case, it is very difficult to make a very precise prediction.
Among the new data incorporated into the calculations of the simulations, the effect on the Magallanes cloud (a Satellite Dwarf Galaxy of ours) was included.
Although the mass of the great cloud of Magallanes is only of the order of 15% of the Milky Way, its gravitational attraction directed perpendicularly to the orbit with Andromeda disturbs the movement of our galaxy enough to significantly reduce the possibility of a fusion.
Scientists discovered that there is only a 2% chance that galaxies collide in the next 5,000 million years, Durham University said. This scenario is contrary to what was believed so far, that is, that collision was a certainty within that period.
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Evolution of both galaxies offers a great variety of possibilities
In just over half of the simulated scenarios, the Milky Way and Andromeda experience at least one close encounter, before losing enough orbital energy to end up colliding and merging, but within 8,000 to 10,000 million years, not five.
On that time scale, the sun will have already been consumed.
In most other simulated cases, the two galaxies are found at such a large distance that they continue to evolve practically imperturbable for a long time.
The new conclusions do not imply an error in the previous calculations, but the team could include more variables in their simulations thanks to the modern data of space telescopes, said the main author of study, Till Sawala, of the University of Helsinki.
Thus, he specified that when they tried to start from the same cases as the previous researchers, they obtained the same results.
“Now we know that there are many possibilities” of avoiding the fate of a shock between galaxies, said Carlos Frenk, from Durham University.
The researcher added that, when he sees the results of the team’s calculations, he amazes that they are able to simulate with “so much precision the evolution of gigantic sets of stars over billions of years and find out their final destination.”
For Frenk it is a “a testimony of the power of physics allied with the power of the great superorders.”
With EFE information
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