Next Up On Andromeda’s Menu: Earth!

Earthlings! Get ready to pack your bags and leave… the planet! No, wait; leave the galaxy if you can!
The biggest galaxy in our galactic neighborhood, and the closest, Andromeda is on a cannibalism spree, consuming other galaxies as it moves, and leaving a path of destruction. And at a speed of 75 miles per second, it is headed our way!

Named after the mythological princess of the kingdom of Ethiopia of Greek mythology, Andromeda is sometimes referred to as the “Chained Lady” or the “Chained Woman” in English, Mulier Catenata in Latin, and al-Mar’at al Musalsalah in Arabic, owing to the fact that its mythological counterpart was chained to a rock wall before the great Perseus decided to rescue her. But it seems the cosmic chain holding the galaxy of the same name had been long broken.

Over the decades, scientists have found proof of the stellar remains after Andromeda had consumed galaxies in its path. Apparently, this phenomenon is common in the cosmos, according to Harvard astronomer Mark Reid. Big galaxies crash with small galaxies, either pulling stars away from them and rearranging the stellar patterns, or creating new mega-galaxies. And the process might actually look quite spectacular from the ground, he said, creating a beautiful night sky.

This artist's concept shows a view across a mysterious disk of young, blue stars encircling a supermassive black hole at the core of the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The region around the black hole is barely visible at the center of the disk. The background stars are the typical older, redder population of stars that inhabit the cores of most galaxies. Spectroscopic observations by the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the blue light consists of more than 400 stars that formed in a burst of activity about 200 million years ago. The stars are tightly packed in a disk that is only a light-year across. Under the black hole's gravitational grip, the stars are traveling very fast: 2.2 million miles an hour (3.6 million kilometers an hour, or 1,000 kilometers a second) Object Names: M31, Andromeda Galaxy, NGC 224. (NASA/ESA)

Also called Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, Andromeda, a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way, is the biggest one in the Local Group, which consists, apart from Andromeda and the Milky Way, the Triangulum Galaxy and about 30 other galaxies that are smaller. Certainly the largest galaxy in the group, Andromeda might not be the most massive, as recent studies reveal that the Milky Way has more dark matter and so might be the most massive galaxy in the group. Andromeda contains about one trillion (1012) stars, as observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006, a far greater number than that for our Milky Way. The mapping of Andromeda stretches for half a million light years around it.

In a recent study carried out by lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia, and co-authored by Mike Irwin, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England, and John Dubinski of the University of Toronto, the huge scale of this cosmic cannibalism is revealed, displaying evidence of the destructed cosmic bodies right in front of the scientist’s eyes. Their report is published in the journal Nature, Thursday’s edition.

Andromeda is approximately 2.5 million light years away from our galaxy, one light year being about 5.9 trillion miles. The dwarf galaxy, Triangulum, was once stripped of some of its stars by Andromeda, and in about 3 billion years, it will spiral completely into the galaxy-eater, at about the same time that this cannibal will come crashing into our home galaxy.

Image of Andromeda Galaxy (M31) taken by Spitzer in infrared showing angry black hole (Credit: NASA/JPL/K.Gordon, University of Arizona)

However, McConnachie said, this big crash might turn out to be nothing but a creation of a super galaxy or the rearranging of the night sky without a big explosion. According to Irwin, this is because most of the galaxy is an empty space, and there is hardly any banging of planets and stars as they come barging at each other.

Well, however it may be, it certainly won’t be like rearranging plates on the dining table, and if you are any reasonable, you would thank your lucky stars that you won’t be around to witness that spectacular light show.

Kind of makes you wonder if the Galactus in “Fantastic 4: Rise of The Silver Surfer” wasn’t all fictional…

Related posts:

1. Andromeda: X-Ray View
2. Viewing Andromeda Galaxy
3. Milky Way and the Dwarf Galaxies Collision
4. Space Death Rays
5. Juno Captures Earth and The Moon