Andromeda galaxy's collision with Milky Way inevitable - Here's what it will look like

There will be a time when the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way. This, however, should not be a matter of concern as the event will take place when humans are long gone or have evolved into an advanced being and migrated to another galaxy through a worm hole (or miraculously survived through some other science fiction idea you can imagine). According to NASA's estimates, the merger between the galaxies will take place in roughly 3.75 billion years from now, a timeline which makes any of the aforementioned scenarios of our survival unlikely. 

Whatever our fate may be, the US space agency recently released a video which offers us a glimpse what the merger would look like to an observer on Earth and how jaw-dropping the night sky will become. 

Today Chandra is studying our closest spiral neighbor — the Andromeda Galaxy! In roughly 3.75 billion years, Andromeda is going to merge with our very own Milky Way Galaxy. Can you imagine how amazing the night sky might look? This video gives us a glimpse! pic.twitter.com/WMLyVACZC4

— Chandra Observatory (@chandraxray) October 2, 2023

"The merged galaxies form a huge elliptical galaxy, its bright core dominating the nighttime sky. Scoured of dust and gas, the new galaxy no longer makes stars and no nebulae appear in the sky," NASA said describing the merger in a post on its Chandra Observatory profile on X. 

Although, it is worth noting that no observer will be able to witness the galactic merger with such stability if it were to happen today, as the collision would send the star, planets, nebulae, black holes and every known entity in the two galaxies flying around violently. 

This collision will eventually make the objects in the two galaxies coalesce into a single entity, a galaxy with its own new identity. 

The Hubble telescope has observed several galaxies that are in the process of a merger hundreds of light-years away. One such pair, collectively named Arp 107, lies about 465 million light years away.

(The Arp 107. Image: NASA)

(The galactic collision observed by NSF's observatory. Image: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)

The National Science Foundation's International Gemini Observatory also observed the collision of two spiral galaxies NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 about 500 million light-years away.