Watch our galaxy get eaten by another

Tuesday, September 23, 2014, 8:33 AM - Our galaxy's ultimate fate is real eye candy in the video above.

It's a simulation, put together by scientists at Australia's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and posted to the institute's Vimeo page.

Simply, it shows the 5 billion-year process that will end with the Milky Way merging with Andromeda, in an "act of galactic cannibalism" (the researchers' words, not ours).

"Technically, Andromeda will be eating us, as it's the bigger of the two galaxies," the researchers write. "There haven't been any large mergers with our galaxy recently, but we can see the remnants of galaxies that have previously been snacked on by the Milky Way. We're also going to eat two nearby dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds sometime in the future."

But, as the simulation shows, it's not truly the end for our galactic home. Rather, the merger will result in an even larger galaxy.

A team at ICRAR released new research last week that suggests larger galaxies are less efficient at making more stars, so they grow and sustain themselves by merging with smaller ones.

"All galaxies start off small and grow by collecting gas and quite efficiently turning it into stars,” said University of Western Australia researcher Dr. Aaron Robotham, whose team examined the dietary habits of 22,000 galaxies. "Then every now and then they get completely cannibalised by some much larger galaxy."

The Vimeo simulation has been making the rounds on several websites, including io9. The research paper itself can be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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