With the use of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) have predicted that Milky Way Galaxy is on a collision course with its closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy that is also known as Messier 31 or M31.

According to the analysis, the collision might take place in about 4 billion years. Andromeda is located about 2.5 million light-years away from the Milky Way and is also a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said, “Because Andromeda is getting closer to us, astronomers have speculated for a long time whether it might collide with our Milky Way and whether the galaxies might merge together.” He added that it is important to determine what the sideways motion of the Andromeda Galaxy is because this will determine if it will collide with the Milky Way or miss it at a distance.

Scientists using Hubble Space Telescope measured tiny sideways shifts in the galaxy’s stars over a 5-to-7-year period and predicted that Andromeda is headed towards the Milky Way. What is worse that a smaller galaxy, the M33, could join the collision.

It is believed that the over two billion years, the two galaxies will merge to create mega galaxy and the sun might move away from the centre of the galaxy while the Earth is unlikely to be disturbed from it position around the run.

On what will be the name given to the combined, elliptical galaxy, Van der Marel said there wasn’t an official name yet some are calling it the "Milkomeda.”