There's a galactic collision in our future. We've known for a while that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is going to collide with Andromeda.
The guess is that this will take place in about 4.5 billion years, and the prediction is that the two galaxies will merge into one hyper galaxy.
Earth won't be habitable by that point, but the solar system will survive...individual stars are not going to hit each other, just move around each other into a new configuration.
So, 4.5 billion years.
Or...tomorrow. See, it turns out galaxies are a lot larger than we thought. Specifically, galaxies have halos. Think of them as the galaxy's equivalent of the solar system's Oort cloud, except instead of being lots of small objects, they're shells of plasma.
And the halos of the two galaxies are already starting to touch. What this means for us? Pretty much nothing, it's just some cool science.
We'll eventually be able to see the halos of other galaxies. Except one...
...we have no technology current or in the works that will allow us to see our own galactic halo.
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