Galaxies and Red shift

[natasha321]

If our galaxy is continously expanding, making wavelengths more streched and red shift would occur would it be possible for our galaxy to hit another galaxy?

[bibblebub]

It's going to happen in the Local Group during the next few billion years simply because of gravity.

[Ethersapien]

Our Galaxy is not expanding due to the general expansion of the cosmos, (cause of the redshift) any expansion would only be due to the absorption of dwarf galaxies orbiting it. The Andromeda galaxy is however travelling toward us and a possible collision with it will occur in 2 to 4 billion years. On a side note, the milky way was formed from multiple collisions with other galaxies in the past, this is not a rare occurence. There are many galaxies viewed by astronomers that are in the process of colliding. Google images http://chrismstevens....6761280_wallpaper.jpg

[R1Geezer]

Our galaxy is not expanding, we are however moving away from most other galaxies, and they are red shifted. As others say above Andromeda is in fact blue shifted and thus rushing towards us, we colldie in approx 3billion years.

Just type "colliding galaxies" into Google after first selecing "images" and you can see some amazing pictures and artist impressions.

[beso]

Although galaxies collide, it is quite rare for stars to actually hit each other during those collisions because of their relatively tiny size compared to the vast spaces between them.

If you are really into stars galaxies, check out the zoo.

http://www.galaxyzoo.org

You can actually participate in the research by doing classifications.
Many good links to photos in the forum