The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all: 'From near-certainty to a coin flip'

Three future scenarios for Milky Way & Andromeda encounter. Main A 100,000 light-year separation leads to a collision (Bottom left) At 500,000 light-years, dark matter provides friction that brings galaxies to a close encounter. (Bottom right) Galaxies bypass at 1 million light-year separation.

A titanic cosmic collision between the Milky Way and its closest large galactic neighbor, Andromeda, may not be as sure a thing as scientists thought.

Previously, it had been proposed that there was a good chance that Andromeda and our galactic home, which are moving together, would meet in around 5 billion years and merge to form a daughter galaxy dubbed "Milkomeda."

New research has revealed that there is a much smaller chance that these two spiral galaxies will slam into each other and merge over the next 10 billion years than was believed. In fact, it's about 50/50.