Three galaxies are tearing each other apart in stunning new Hubble telescope image

Three galaxies collide in this stunning new Hubble image.
Three galaxies collide in this stunning new Hubble image. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA)

Corkscrewing through the cosmos, three distant galaxies collide in a stunning new image captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

This cosmic crash is known as a triple galaxy merger, when three galaxies slowly draw each other nearer and tear each other apart with their competing gravitational forces. Mergers like these are common throughout the universe, and all large galaxies — including our own, the Milky Way — owe their size to violent mergers like this one.

As chaotic as they seem, mergers like these are more about creation than destruction. As gas from the three neighboring galaxies collides and condenses, a vast sea of material from which new stars will emerge is assembled at the center of the newly unified galaxy. 

Studying galactic mergers can help astronomers better understand the Milky Way's past and future. The Milky Way is thought to have gobbled up more than a dozen galaxies over the past 12 billion years, including during the exceptionally named Gaia sausage merger, Live Science previously reported.

Meanwhile, our galaxy appears on track to combine with the nearby Andromeda galaxy about 4.5 billion years from now. The merger will totally alter the night sky over Earth but will likely leave the solar system unharmed, according to NASA.

Originally published on Live Science.

Brandon Specktor
Editor

Brandon is the space/physics editor at Live Science. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and other outlets. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. He enjoys writing most about space, geoscience and the mysteries of the universe.