The collision of our galaxy and Andromeda in about five billion years has been suggested as a high likelihood scenario, with the resulting new galaxy already dubbed ‘Milkomeda’, however the authors suggest that the gravitational pull of the Large Magellanic Cloud was not considered in previous analyses and a merger between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud is almost certain within the next two billion years, they say.

The authors note that even using the most up-to-date data, there is still some uncertainty about how the Milky Way–Andromeda system will evolve, and that future data from the Gaia telescope could help produce a more accurate simulation.