The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is gravitationally bound to the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is a significantly larger galaxy than our own, sitting at about twice the number of stars that our Milky Way has, and so its gravitational clout is significantly stronger. With what we know now about Andromeda and the Milky Way, our two galaxies are destined to merge together.
We’ve known that Andromeda was a little unusual for quite some time – it’s one of the few galaxies which is found to be moving towards us instead of away from us – a red flag that our two galaxies are more intertwined than the average galaxy. But getting the exact details of how this merging was going to go forward has been quite a finicky piece of work. – READ MORE
