End of the Milky Way: Galaxy is dying pushing itself from one supercluster to the other | Science | New



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The galaxy of the Milky Way is part of a group of galaxies called the group of the Virgin, which in turn is part of an even larger group of galaxies called the supercluster of the Virgin. The supercluster of the Virgin is 110 million light years old and contains about 110 billion times the number of stars of the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars, according to NASA. The numbers are almost incomprehensible, but what is certain is that it amounts to a lot of seriousness.

With all the gravity, there is a lot of back and forth in the supercluster, which strips the galaxies of their hydrogen.

Without hydrogen, stars can not be created.

Billions of years into the future, there will be more hydrogen to create new stars, and the current generation of stars has a limited lifespan.

The life of a star depends on its mass – our Sun has enough mass to keep melting hydrogen for about 10 billion years.

Nicholas Webb, from the University of London, wrote on Quora's Q & A site: "Our galaxy is not alone. It is part of a small group of galaxies that are coming together gradually to form a gigantic galaxy.

"It's the supercluster of the Virgin, a cloud of galaxies centered on the Virgo group, a cluster of dense galaxies and well a quadrillion times the mass of our Sun.

"The cluster is 16.5 million parsecs, and yet its gravity still pushes our local group towards it.

"Within the group of the Virgin, its immense gravitational pull pushes galaxies to near-relativistic speeds, destroying their free hydrogen and leaving them without new stars.

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"Imagine, a whole galaxy, slowly dying, unable to renew, just because of where it is."

However, before all that, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda – the galaxy closest to ours and 220,000 light-years wide, twice the size of the Milky Way – in order to to ensure that life can not survive.

Andromeda is getting closer to the Milky Way at about five million kilometers a year, which means that "in about three billion years, Andromeda will collide with ours," according to Geraint Lewis, an astrophysicist at University of Sydney.

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Mr. Lewis continued, "The collision will disrupt the Milky Way and it will light up like a Christmas tree when creating new stars.

"The gas available in this collision is depleting very quickly. New stars will form and die. The gas will be engulfed by a supermassive black hole. "

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