'It will EAT us' Earth and Milky Way galaxy will be SWALLOWED by our galactic neighbour
THE Earth and the entire Milky Way galaxy will eventually be SWALLOWED by our largest galactic neighbour, astronomers warned today.
The Solar System will one day be destroyed after experts discovered giant galaxies "cannibalise" smaller ones instead of making their own stars.
This is as a result of gravity acting as a magnet and means dwarf galaxies are engulfed by their larger neighbours.
Dr Aaron Robotham, from the University of Western Australia said: "All galaxies start off small and grow by collecting gas and quite efficiently turning it into stars.
You can still see remnants of all the old galaxies [the Milky Way has] cannibalised
"Then every now and then they get completely cannibalised by some much larger galaxy.
"The Milky Way hasn't merged with another large galaxy for a long time but you can still see remnants of all the old galaxies we've cannibalised."
Our galaxy will first be eaten by two nearby dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, before being consumed by the Andromeda galaxy.
However, the study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal said this will not happen until five billion years time.
Dr Robotham added: "The topic is much debated, but a popular mechanism is where the active galactic nucleus basically cooks the gas and prevents it from cooling down to form stars.
"If you waited a really, really, really long time that would eventually happen but by really long I mean many times the age of the Universe so far."