Milky Way poised to collide with nearest galaxy

The Milky Way is set to crash violently into its nearest galaxy Andromeda sooner than scientists originally predicted. Researchers found they had previously miscalculated the mass of our galaxy when making their most detailed mapping of the Milky Way.
A team lead by Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US measured the Milky Way in a three-dimensional way and found that it is actually 15 per cent larger in breadth than Andromeda. More importantly, it is denser, with 50 per cent more mass.
Being bigger means the gravitational pull between the Milky Way and Andromeda is stronger, meaning the collision between the two galaxies will take place earlier than initially thought.
However, people shouldn’t be worried about the event happening any time soon - as any collision would still be at least two to three billion years from now.
The new findings were presented at the American Astronomical Society’s convention in Long Beach, California. Dr Reid, author of the findings, said: ‘Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant, and that we were the little sister of Andromeda. ‘But now it’s more like we’re fraternal twins.’
Dr Reid and his colleagues used a large system of 10 radio telescope antennas to measure the brightest newborn stars in the galaxy at different times in Earth’s orbit around the sun. They made a map of those stars, not just in the locations where they were first seen, but an additional dimension of time - something which hasn’t been done before.