Extended Data Fig. 5: Effect of the merger threshold on the MW-M31 distance evolution and merger rate. | Nature Astronomy

Extended Data Fig. 5: Effect of the merger threshold on the MW-M31 distance evolution and merger rate.

From: No certainty of a Milky Way–Andromeda collision

Extended Data Fig. 5

The distance between the MW and M31 (analogous to Fig. 2) in the four-body MW-M31-M33-LMC system for different merger thresholds. From left to right, we show results with a threshold of 10 kpc, 20 kpc or 30 kpc for all mergers. The MW-M31 merger probability is not very sensitive to the assumed merger threshold, and we obtain almost the same merger probability even with a (very generous) threshold of 30 kpc.

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