The collision of Andromeda with our Milky way will take place later than expected earlier

Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and 
R. van der Marel (STScI), T. Hallas, and A. Mellinger

For a long time, scientists believed that the merging of our Milky way with the largest among our local group of galaxies, the Andromeda, will take place in about 3.9 billion years from now. But a recent analysis of astronomers at European Space Agency (ESA), from the data captured by the Star Surveying Satellite Gaia suggest that the collision course is going to happen 600 million years later, i.e. 4.5 billion years from now.


The event is explained in the Astrophysical Journal and is characterized as a "swipe" rather than a direct collision. The merging would result in a large galaxy when these two combine completely.

Although, the merging will be an important event in our local universe, but it won't be so much significant for our earth, because till then earth would have been swallowed up by our Sun which would have expanded into a red giant. The atmosphere and surface of earth would have dried up and all the life form will cease to exist.
The event might sound quite dramatic and chaotic, but it is not so in actual. When two galaxies merge or collide, they pass through each other like ghosts, as most of the space inside them is empty.