Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmos
On this, I did a statistical simulation of the Milky Way and Andromeda collision a few years ago and both galaxies would have to pass through one another in their entirety 6-7 times before there would be a collision.
Now disruptions and collisions are two very different things but it gives a bit of an idea of how little disruptions there are. I guess you’d statistically expect a major disruption or two when hundreds of billions of stars are being forced together  |
That would be one heavy piece of computation. Not on your iPhone.
My belief (can't quickly find a reference) is that it's not the stars that collide, it's the gas between the stars. The compression of the interstellar gas triggers the spectacular new star formation that you can see in parts of the Antennae.