What happens when galaxies collide?
With billions of galaxies in our universe,
it's no surprise that they sometimes collide.
The Milky Way and its nearest similarly
sized neighbor, Andromeda or M31,
are part of the local group of galaxies.
They're pretty close to each other.
Only about 10 galaxy lengths separate the Milky Way
and Andromeda.
And when they collide in 4 billion years
it will be spectacular.
We can simulate the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda
galaxies and predict that it should
lead to a great deal of new stars,
and a whole lot of galactic chaos.
Eventually, the two galaxies will
merge into a single galaxy, which
will settle down into a larger Milkdromeda Galaxy.
But don't worry.
The stars within the galaxies won't collide.
Galaxies are made up of mostly empty space.
And the stars within them are very
spread out, but the gas that surrounds
the stars and forms them will collide spectacularly.
Many galaxies are in the middle of a collision today.
These type of galaxies are the ones
that would not have fit into Edwin Hubble's categories.
Irregularly shaped spirals merging and distorting arms
winding in strangely beautiful shapes.
The exquisite detail of these types of collisions
can be studied in a new light with NASA's James Webb Space
Telescope.