Galactic Collision Could Wake Up Black Hole, Send Solar System Hurtling Into Space

A devastating collision between the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Milky Way Galaxy may occur in two billion years, waking up a black hole and forcefully relocating our solar system.

Astrophysicists at Durham University in the United Kingdom have published new research predicting the collision between our galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way about 163,000 light years away from Earth. This catastrophic event may apparently occur even earlier than the predicted collision of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxy Andromeda in eight billion years.

Led by scientists at Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology working with the University of Helsinki in Finland, the research team used the EAGLE galaxy formation supercomputer simulation to predict the galactic collision.

According to the research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the impact of the Milky Way and LMC coming together could force the activation of our galaxy's dormant black hole. This would then start devouring surrounding gas and grow in size by up to 10 times.

While it eats up the surrounding gas, the black hole may release high-energy radiation. But although this may occur too far away for it to actually affect life on Earth, there is a possibility that the impact could send our solar system flying into space.

Dr. Marius Cautun, lead author of the research and a postdoctoral fellow in Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, said that though two billion years may seem to be a long time, it is actually "very short" in terms of cosmic timescales.

"The destruction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, as it is devoured by the Milky Way, will wreak havoc with our galaxy, waking up the black hole that lives at its center and turning our galaxy into an 'active galactic nucleus' or quasar," he said in a statement Friday.

"This phenomenon will generate powerful jets of high energy radiation emanating from just outside the black hole," he continued. "While this will not affect our Solar System, there is a small chance that we might not escape unscathed from the collision between the two galaxies which could knock us out of the Milky Way and into interstellar space."

If this does happen, it won't be an isolated case. Galaxies like the Milky Way are surrounded by a group of smaller satellite galaxies that orbit around them. This could be likened to how bees move around a hive.

The satellite galaxies would usually just orbit around the main one for billions of years. But apparently, some would deviate from time to time and would sink to the center, collide and be absorbed by their host galaxy.