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White to move and mate in two #674 - Collision with the Andromeda Galaxy less likely [1]
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Date: 2025-06-03
A new study that used data from Hubble and ESA’s Gaia space telescope, has re-examined the long-held prediction of a collision and merger between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, and found it is far less inevitable than astronomers had previously suspected.
By carefully accounting for uncertainties in existing measurements, and including the gravitational influence of other nearby galaxies (the Large Magellanic Cloud, a massive satellite galaxy currently falling into the Milky Way, and M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, which orbits Andromeda) researchers found that in about half of the Monte-Carlo simulations, the Milky Way and Andromeda do not merge at all within the next 10 billion years, i.e., there is only about a 50% chance the two will merge in the next 10 billion years.
These galaxy images illustrate three possible encounter scenarios between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
In the top left panel, a wide-field Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) image showing galaxies M81 and M82 serves as an example of the Milky Way and Andromeda passing each other at large distances. The top right panel shows NGC 6786, a pair of interacting galaxies displaying the telltale signs of tidal disturbances after a close encounter. The bottom panel shows NGC 520, a cosmic train wreck as two galaxies are actively merging together.
Animations like these that show the two galaxies collide in about 4 billion years and merge 2 billion years later, do not account for the uncertainties (i.e, error bars) in various parameters measured for the two galaxies.
The study still leaves a small chance of around 2% for a head-on collision between the galaxies in only 4 to 5 billion years. But humankind on Earth will long be dead before then anyways given the Sun will roast Earth and make it inhabitable in roughly 1 billion years.
Now let’s breathe easy and solve today’s rather symmetrical-looking puzzle composed in 1933 by Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer Paul Keres (1916-1975). The unofficial Chessmetrics system places Keres in the top 10 players in the world between approximately 1936 and 1965, and overall he had one of the highest winning percentages of all grandmasters in history.
Norway Chess 2025
Top players are competing since last week in the annual Norway Chess tournament held in Stavanger, Norway. Here are the current standings after 8 of 10 rounds -
The closed tournament features 6 players. Each player plays every other player twice.
An Armageddon game is played if the main (classical) game ends in a draw. The player with white pieces continues with white in Armageddon. If the Armageddon game is drawn, black wins.
Points:
Win in the classical game: 3 points
Loss in the classical game: 0 points
Draw in the classical game & win Armageddon: 1.5 points
Draw in the classical game & loss Armageddon: 1 point
Bonus Puzzle
Hikaru Nakamura beat Magnus Carlsen in the Armageddon round after this ending. Can you find the killer move by White?
P.S.
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