Apart from the fear of a deadly asteroid smashing into Earth, a new research has pointed out a soon-to-happen catastrophic collision of an upcoming galaxy that is expected to sling out solar system into space.

Catastrophic galaxy collision soon send solar system flying into space

A research from Durham University theorized that an upcoming galactic collision will probably wake the black hole situated at the center of Milky Way and fling our solar system into interstellar space.

“This phenomenon will generate powerful jets of high energy radiation emanating from just outside the black hole,” lead author Marius Cautun said. “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.”

It was earlier believed that the Large Magellanic Cloud – nearby galaxy that slid into the Milky Way’s vicinity some 1.5 billion years ago – would settle into an orbit around our galaxy. However, the new research showed that this galaxy has way more dark matter than assumed, which means it has much greater mass and can slam into our galaxy rather than orbiting it.

This collision is likely to awaken the sleeping black hole located at the center of our galaxy, hence cause it to gorge down all nearby matter and grow as much as 10 times in size.

However, this upcoming disastrous collision is still some two billion years away – along time for human life, but a short one on cosmic timescale, as per CNET.

“While two billion years is an extremely long time compared to a human lifetime, it is a very short time on cosmic timescales,” Cautun said. “The destruction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, as it is devoured by the Milky Way, will wreak havoc with our galaxy, turning it into an active galactic nucleus or quasar.”