According to a recent study the solar system might be thrown from the close to centre position that it currently acquires to the boondocks when our galaxy Milky Way merges with our neighboring galaxy Andromeda a few billion years from now.
These new calculations have been carried out by T.J. Cox and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. These researchers have carried several computer simulations, which have suggested that Andromeda and Milky Way will make their first close pass in about 2 billion years and they will eventually merge in around 5 billion years from now.
Currently the two galaxies are separated by about 2.2 million light years, but they are rushing towards each other at a speed of about 310,000 mph, at that speed they are bound to skim past each other in another 2 billion years.
During this initial pass the two galaxies will circle around each other and their stars will begin to intermingle. At that time our Sun will be a hydrogen-burning main-sequence star, that would have brightened and all the water present on the surface of Earth would have evaporated.
The model also shows that there is a 12% chance that during the first brush of the galaxies the Sun will be pulled from its present position and will be stripped from the parent galaxy, after some more time there is a 3% chance that the Sun will be more closely bound to Andromeda than to the Milky Way as it is today. Cox also stated that to a certain degree Andromeda will steal our solar system.
Then some 5 billion years from now Andromeda would completely merge with our Milky Way and a new football-shaped galaxy will be formed, which might bear the name “Milkomeda” or “Milkymeda” or the “Andromeda Way”.
When this merger takes place our Sun will be an aging star and on the verge of the red-giant formation stage, finally the solar system will be pushed out to more than 100,000 light years from the center of the new galaxy farther than the current position of 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way.
Via: MSNBC
