Milky Way Could Collide with Another Galaxy Sooner Than Expected

A new study reports that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) could collide with the Milky Way galaxy in two billion years. This is much earlier than the previous estimates of the predicted collision of the Milky Way with Andromeda, a neighbouring galaxy, in eight billion years.

According to the Durham University astrophysicists, the LMC will awaken the Milky Way’s black hole, which in turn will grow tenfold in size. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, it emits high-energy radiation, which could potentially affect our Solar system, although the chances are small.

The Milky Way is surrounded by a group of smaller galaxies that orbit around it, a process that can go on for billions of years. But, from time to time, the smaller galaxies can be absorbed by the host galaxy.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 163,000 years away from the Milky Way, is the brightest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It has become a satellite galaxy only about 1.5 billion years ago. Astronomers previously thought that the LMC would either enter the Milky Way orbit or leave its gravitational pull because of it moves relatively fast.

The new study, which was published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, challenges these assumptions. The researchers found that the mass of the LMC is twice of what was previously thought, and because of that, it is rapidly losing energy, with a collision likely to happen sooner.

“While two billion years is an extremely long time compared to a human lifetime, it is a very short time on cosmic timescales,” said Dr. Marius Cautun, lead author of the study. “The destruction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, as it is devoured by the Milky Way, will wreak havoc with our galaxy, waking up the black hole that lives at its centre and turning our galaxy into an ‘active galactic nucleus’ or quasar. This phenomenon will generate powerful jets of high energy radiation emanating from just outside the black hole. While this will not affect our Solar System, there is a small chance that we might not escape unscathed from the collision between the two galaxies which could knock us out of the Milky Way and into interstellar space.”

The researchers used the EAGLE galaxy formation supercomputer simulation to predict the collision, which, they say, would be a spectacular thing to see.

“Beautiful as it is, our Universe is constantly evolving, often through violent events like the forthcoming collision with the Large Magellanic Cloud,” said Professor Carlos Frenk, co-author of the study. “Barring any disasters, like a major disturbance to the Solar System, our descendants, if any, are in for a treat: a spectacular display of cosmic fireworks as the newly awakened supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy reacts by emitting jets of extremely bright energetic radiation.”

“We think that up to now our galaxy has had only a few mergers with very low mass galaxies,” said Dr. Alis Deason of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, noting that the merger of the two galaxies is potentially long overdue. “This represents very slim pickings when compared to nearby galaxies of the same size as the Milky Way. For example, our nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, devoured galaxies weighing nearly 30 times more than those consumed by the Milky Way. Therefore, the collision with the Large Magellanic Cloud is long overdue and it is needed to make our galaxy typical.”

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