In a new study, a group of astronomers suggest the Andromeda Galaxy will eat out Milky Way Galaxy in five billion years' time.
Consider us warned.
According to the Washington Post, the multi-institutional team of scientists published their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Once galaxies get too large to grow anymore on their own, the researchers said, they turn to absorbing surrounding galaxies.
Unfortunately for our Milky Way, Andromeda is a prime candidate to get gobbled.
"All galaxies start off small and grow by collecting gas and quite efficiently turning it into stars," study lead author Dr. Aaron Robotham, who is based at the University of Western Australia, said in a press release. "Then every now and then they get completely cannibalized by some much larger galaxy.
"The Milky Way hasn't merged with another large galaxy for a long time but you can still see remnants of all the old galaxies we've cannibalized," he said. "We're also going to eat two nearby dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, in about four billion years."
The Milky Way has gotten to the point where it will no longer create stars and expand its reaches on its own. This expansion also increases a galaxy's gravitational force, drawing in smaller, weaker galaxies for the killing.
The astronomers believe this will keep happening until only a few gargantuan galaxies remain in the universe, but since this does not happen quickly, it is probably a ways off.
"The topic is much debated, but a popular mechanism is where the active galactic nucleus basically cooks the gas and prevents it from cooling down to form stars," Robotham said. "If you waited a really, really, really long time that would eventually happen but by really long I mean many times the age of the Universe so far."
