A series of stills showing the Milky Way-Andromeda merger, and how the sky will appear different from Earth as it happens. This merger will occur roughly 4 billion years in the future, with a huge burst of star formation eventually subsiding to a more quiet state. The last panel, in particular, shows us as a red-and-dead, giant elliptical galaxy, and that outcome is now very much in doubt. (NASA; Z. LEVAY AND R. VAN DER MAREL, STSCI; T. HALLAS; AND A. MELLINGER)

The Milky Way Might Never Become An Elliptical Galaxy

Even after our merger with Andromeda, we might retain our spiral shape for trillions of years.

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Starts With A Bang!

10 min readMay 18, 2021

You probably don’t think about it very often, but the Milky Way galaxy won’t remain in its present, undisturbed state for very long. Our Local Group is dominated by just two main galaxies — ourselves and Andromeda —…

The Milky Way Might Never Become An Elliptical Galaxy

Even after our merger with Andromeda, we might retain our spiral shape for trillions of years.

Written by Ethan Siegel