Earth's End of Days could be the result of the solar system being blasted into interstellar space after a newly-predicted collision with a nearby dwarf galaxy, but not before a spectacular display of 'cosmic fireworks'.

Astronomers previously thought that the mighty Andromeda Galaxy, a spiral galaxy 2.5 million light years distant, and the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way, would collide with the Milky Way in eight billion years.

However, astrophysicists at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology working with the University of Helsinki in Finland now think that a far smaller and closer dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is headed our way, and could devastate our corner of the galaxy in 'just' a couple of billion years.

Whew! For a second there I thought they said in just a couple of million years. ;-) To read more, click here.