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The Milky Way galaxy could be cannibalized by its larger neighbor Andromeda five billion years later, scientists in Australia have said.

According to findings published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, galaxies which have stopped growing by turning gases into stars within their fold, are the larger ones which grow by consuming nearby smaller galaxies. While smaller galaxies continue to make stars, the bigger ones don't due to certain unfavorable conditions in the galactic nucleus, researchers reported, based on data collected using Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales.

NDTV reported that the study involved looking at more than 22,000 galaxies including Milky Way and its neighbors. Researchers said the Milky Way could snack on two smaller nearby galaxies before it becomes the meal.

"The Milky Way hasn't merged with another large galaxy for a long time but you can still see remnants of all the old galaxies we've cannibalized. We're also going to eat two nearby dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, in about four billion years," said Dr. Aaron Robotham of the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Robotham said that Andromeda is larger than Milky Way and would eventually consume it. He also explained to Forbes that star formation slows down because of some feedback action in central star cluster of galaxies.

"The topic is much debated, but a popular mechanism is where the active galactic nucleus basically cooks the gas and prevents it from cooling down to form stars," he said.

Robotham and his team concluded that eventually gravity would fuse all galaxies into a few super galaxies after many billions of years under gravity. The galaxies were observed as part of Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey which took seven years to complete.