Astronomers have known for many years that our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest neighbor, are drifting together and will eventually merge into one big galaxy in a few billion years. New calculations are being made to try to figure out what will happen to our sun and solar system in the process.

Computer models created by T.J. Cox and Abraham Loeb from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics show the two galaxies will make their first close pass in about two billion years. It will take another 2 to 3 billion years for the galaxies gravitational fields to combine the two moving masses into one huge mass, making a complete merger and forming a new galaxy.

Astronomers believe that our sun will end up in the outer fringes of the newly combined galaxy. Right now, our sun is located about 30,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. That’s just a little more than half-way out. After the merger, our sun may be located about 100,000 light years from the center of the new galaxy, on its outer edges.

Our sun will be at the end of its long life on the main sequence and ready to go into its red giant phase at that time. Our sun will have already grown in size enough to increase temperatures on Earth to the point where all of Earth’s oceans would be boiled away, leaving no life on Earth’s surface.