This hot ‘stream’ of star gas will collide with our galaxy sooner than we thought
The Milky Way is playing a violent game of tug-of-war with its two toughest neighbors — the rowdy sibling dwarf galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. It’s hardly a fair contest. With a combined heft of about 17 billion solar masses (nearly 100 times scrawnier than the Milky Way), the two dwarf galaxies are slowly being torn apart by the gravity of our galaxy, and by each other.