When worlds collide: Is our galactic collision avoidable?

So we may avert disaster.

Whew!

For the past 112 years – give or take, depending on when you became aware of it – we've had a feeling of impending doom. Disaster was coming. It was just a matter of time.

Since 1912 (the same year the Titanic sunk and Fenway Park opened in Boston), astronomers believed Andromeda and our Milky Way galaxy were on a collision course. It would be a terrible crash, like when Scott Cousins ran over Buster Posey in 2011 and ended Posey's second season.

They didn't have a precise timeline for the collision, just that it would happen in the next several billion years. But, like global warming, colonoscopies and Raiders fans being irrationally confident about their team, this had a sense of inevitability.

One day we'd be living our lives and BAM! We'd slam into Andromeda. Or vice-versa.

The anxiety of that could be called the Andromeda Strain, if that wasn't already been the name of a book by Michael Crichton that was made into a movie starring Arthur Hill as Dr. Jeremy Stone.

But enough about that. According to an article on Science.org, we've known about the coming collision since, "(astronomer) Vesto Slipher noted that (Andromeda's) light is blue-shifted – squashed toward shorter wavelengths by the Doppler effect, in the same way that an oncoming ambulance siren whines with a higher pitch."

Great description, presumably. Apparently that signaled a collision with the Milky Way, a possibility that became more terrifying when we (by that, I mean Vesto Slipher and I) discovered that Andromeda is actually a galaxy, not an expansion franchise in the Milky Way. Stated simply, Andromeda is not the astronomy equivalent of the Miami Marlins.

After 1912, things continued to change. A 2008 study suggested that the collision between the galaxies would happen in the next 5 billion years. That collision would create a bigger galaxy, but with some stars (possibly including our sun) spinning off and out into space, like when Google buys a competing tech company and becomes bigger, but cuts loose thousands of employees. Sort of. (I don't understand business or astronomy.) The study suggested Earth and the sun would be absorbed by the new galaxy, the kind of optimism that those Google-purchased employees would have shortly before discovering their key cards no longer work.

I know what you're thinking. 

Well, other than, "That guy sure doesn't know much about business or astronomy." You're wondering how likely the collision is, because you have plans for 6 billion years from now and want to know if it's worth adding them to your calendar.

Well, the new study finds that several factors (the motion and mass of the galaxies, the inclusion of a third galaxy, late money coming in on the Raiders) dropped the odds of a collision from overwhelmingly likely to about 50-50 and pushed the potential date of the collision to 8 billion years from now.

Good news: You can add that event that's 6 million years from now to your calendar, you can rest for another 8 billion years, you can drop the name "Vesto Slipher" into casual conversation and most importantly, you get some bonus news.

Should Andromeda and the Milky Way collide and create a new galaxy, astronomers already have a name: Milkomeda.

So we've got that going for us. And by "us," I mean you, me and Vesto Slipher.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.