• Question: In your opinion do you think the galaxy is going to expand?

    Asked by anon-187792 to Miriam on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      The galaxy is bound together with gravity that holds all the stars in place. If the galaxy physically expanded as in the space between everything got bigger then some stars would become ‘unbound’ and be lost but if gravity was strong enough most of the stars would stay orbiting around the galaxy. There is no reason for the galaxy to expand. The only force that expands things is Dark Energy (which mostly acts between galaxies and on the universe as a whole) and it doesn’t have enough energy to beat the gravity holding the galaxy together!

      If you mean expand as in there are more stars that may happen in the future. Stars are born all the time and one day in a few hundred billion years the closest galaxy to us (Andromeda) will merge and form a super large galaxy

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