'From near-certainty to a coin flip'

The Milky Way may not have a catastrophic collision with another huge galaxy as has been predicted, computer simulations revealed Monday, giving our home galaxy a coin-flip chance of avoiding destruction.

But don't worry either way: no galactic smash-up is expected for billions of years, long after our ageing Sun will have burnt away all life on Earth.

The Milky Way and the even-larger galaxy Andromeda are speeding towards each other at 100 kilometres (60 miles) a second, and scientists have long predicted they will collide in around 4.5 billion years.

That would be bad news for our neighbourhood.

Previous research has suggested that the Sun -- and our Earth -- could wind up in the centre of this newly merged "Milkomeda" galaxy and get sucked into its supermassive black hole. Alternatively, the Sun could be shot out into the emptiness of intergalactic space.

However, "proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated", according to a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy.

There is only a roughly 50 per cent chance the Milky Way and Andromeda will smash into each other in the next 10 billion years, the international team of astrophysicists determined.

"It's basically a coin flip," lead study author Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki told AFP.

The researchers ran more than 100,000 computer simulations of our universe's future, using new observations from space telescopes. AFP