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It seems like everything revolve something in space . Moons orbit planets . satellite orbit stars . ace orb the centers of galaxy . But beyond that , things get a little harder to picture . Do galaxies — and , specifically , theMilky Way — eye socket anything ?
To serve that , we first require to know how range work . Consider two objects orbiting each other . Those two bodies maintain a gravitative pulling on each other , keeping them bound together . The objects revolve their common pith of mass — if you could shrink the organisation , the marrow of mass would be the point where you could equilibrate it on your finger . But in the pillow slip of thesolar organisation , or Earth and the Sun Myung Moon , one of the objects is much expectant than the other . The center of mass ends up lying inside the larger body , so the larger object does n’t move much and the smaller object movement on a roughly circular path around the bigger one .
Our galaxy is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.
At with child scales , things get a lilliputian more complicated . Our galaxy is part of a collection of galaxies called theLocal Group , which includes theMilky Way ; the Andromeda coltsfoot ; a small spiral wandflower call Triangulum ; and several dwarf galaxies , include the magnanimous and Small Magellanic Clouds . The Milky Way and Andromeda are the two expectant objects in the Local Group . Because their masses are comparable , the kernel of mass lies between the two galaxy , saidSangmo Tony Sohn , an stargazer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland . There ’s nothing importantly larger than either galaxy nearby , so the two cease up orbit each other .
But the Milky Way ’s electron orbit is n’t rotary or elliptical like the orbits of major planet around the Sunday . " It ’s go to be weird to say if the whitish Way is orbit around something , because that kind of imply that there ’s a enceinte object , " Sohn told Live Science . " But that ’s not the conception here . "
have-to doe with : Why are n’t all orb circular ?
Our galaxy is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.
or else , both the Milky Way and Andromeda are on mostly radial domain . " Imagine the somberness of two things draw out on each other , and they ’re not moving in any way other than the gravitative pull . They will just move straight on the credit line towards each other . That ’s a purely stellate orbit , " saidChris Mihos , an stargazer at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio . The Milky Way ’s orbit is n’t perfectly radiate because there ’s a snatch of sideways movement between the two coltsfoot , Mihos told Live Science .
Their mostly radial ambit toward each other mean that theMilky Way and Andromeda will finally jar , some 4.5 billion years from now . private stars belike wo n’t crash into each other because of the huge distances between them , so the coltsfoot will pass through each other and separate again — but not for long .
" The galaxies [ will ] then turn around and fare back together . And , over the course of study of hundreds of zillion or million of year , they ’ll really merge together into one big galaxy , " Mihos say .
The Milky Way (seen here) will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4.5 billion years.
— How many times has the Dominicus traveled around the milklike Way ?
— How monumental is the Milky Way ?
— What happen in intergalactic quad ?
The gravitative fundamental interaction will likely jostle the stars in both wandflower enough to make the combined extragalactic nebula an elliptical galaxy rather than a spiral one like the Milky Way and Andromeda . The amalgamation could also heat the gas along each galaxy ’s helical arm enough to form young stars , Sohn say .
Orbits on exfoliation large than beetleweed groups are even less limit , but " we certainly make out the Local Group is moving , " Mihos sound out . The Local Group is being perpetrate toward theVirgo Cluster , which contains several hundred galaxies and lies about 65 millionlight - yearsaway . But the Local Group will never make it there , Mihos pronounce , because theexpansion of the universeis pull the Milky Way aside quicker than the gravitational pull of the Virgo Cluster is make it in .
