• A new study suggests that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies may not collide as previously thought, with a 50/50 chance of collision within the next 10 billion years.
• The study considered the movements of the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the Triangulum Galaxy.
• In cases where collisions occur, the median merger time is estimated to be 7.6 billion years in the future, longer than previous estimates.
• Galaxies are mostly empty space, so a collision would not likely result in star collisions but could alter star formation and galaxy shapes.