How many kilometers is the Milky Way from Andromeda? Will it collide in the future?

Andromeda galaxy, also known as Andromeda galaxy, is a spiral galaxy with a huge disk structure in Andromeda, with a diameter of10.6 million light years and a distance of 2.54 million light years. It is the nearest big galaxy in the Milky Way. Its mass is twice that of the Milky Way and its diameter is at least 1.5 times that of the Milky Way.

According to scientists' research, Andromeda galaxy is approaching us at the speed of 120km per second. Through observation, the lateral velocity of Andromeda galaxy may be less than 100km per second, and the distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy is about 2.5 million light years. At this rate, it will collide head-on with our galaxy in about 3.7 billion years! However, according to the British "Guardian" report, a research team composed of American and German scientists said that the mass of the Milky Way is 50% larger than previously expected, and the rotation speed is faster, which means that the Milky Way is more attractive to other galaxies, so the time for the Milky Way to collide with other galaxies, including Andromeda, may be earlier than scientists expected.

Researchers say that once the Milky Way meets other galaxies, the super shock wave generated by the collision will compress the interstellar gas clouds inside the galaxy. Fortunately, this catastrophe will only happen in the distant future. Karl-Menten, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, explained that collisions may occur in billions of years. Although the collision time between the two is much earlier than predicted by scientists, it is still an unreachable future for human beings and will not cause human panic.

There is a view that if the Milky Way does collide with other galaxies, then stars and planets should not collide. On the contrary, galaxies will merge with each other after collision to form new and larger galaxies. At that time, humans may still exist, and we will see a completely different sky scene in the future. The long and narrow Milky Way will disappear and be replaced by a huge bulge made up of billions of planets.