Published December 1, 2021
| public
Journal Article
Galaxy Collisions Preview Milky Way's Fate
- Creators
- Evans, Aaron S.
- Armus, Lee
Abstract
In approximately five billion years, as the sun expands into a red giant star roughly the diameter of Earth's orbit around it, our galaxy will collide with its nearest large neighbor, Andromeda. As gravity draws the pair toward each other for a close encounter, stars will be ripped from their orbits to make spectacular tails, and gas and dust will be squeezed toward the approaching nuclei, destroying the stately, grand spirals that have existed for almost three quarters of the age of the universe.
Additional Information
© 2021 Scientific American, a division of Springer Nature America, Inc.Additional details
- Alternative title
- Cosmic Crashes
- Eprint ID
- 114289
- DOI
- 10.1038/scientificamerican1221-32
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220413-220921442
- Created
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2022-04-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-04-13Created from EPrint's last_modified field