But Don't Hold Your Breath ... Its Not For About Four Billion
Years NASA astronomers announced Thursday they can now predict
with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our galaxy,
sun, and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way
galaxy with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The Milky Way is
destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is
predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely
the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our
Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed. "Our
findings are statistically consistent with a head-on collision
between the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy," said
Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute
(STScI) in Baltimore. The solution came through painstaking NASA
Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the motion of Andromeda,
which also is known as M31. The galaxy is now 2.5 million light-
years away, but it is inexorably falling toward the Milky Way
under the mut