Galactic cannibals

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is huge. But imagine if it collided with another galaxy.

Andromeda is the galaxy neighboring ours, over 2.5 million light years away. In about
four billion years, the Milky Way and the Andromeda are predicted to collide. During the
collision, the two galaxies will merge, essentially eating each other. This is called
galactic cannibalism. They will absorb each other and eventually become one. The
Milky Way is only about 80 percent of the Andromedas size, so the collision will cause
the Andromeda to strip the stars from the Milky Way and create one super-sized
system.

The Hubble Telescope found evidence that the Milky Way has already collided with
another galaxy. There is a shell of about 13 leftover stars from a long-ago galactic
cannibalism. Theyre located about 80,000 light years away from the Milky Ways center.