An analysis of over 20 million stars shed new light on our galaxy's cannibalistic past.
A nearby mini-galaxy, the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, slowly crashed through the Milky Way and ripped stars out of their regular orbits on more than one occasion, according to a new paper in theResearchers used data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory to compare the movements of over 20 million stars located throughout our galaxy, as per aTheir analysis shed new light on the galaxy's violent past — one in which galaxies tear into each other, shifting their structures...
"We can see that these stars wobble and move up and down at different speeds," study author Paul McMillan, an astronomer at Lund University in Sweden, said inThe team modeled a wave pattern that may explain the way the ripple effect is warping our galaxy. Their method, dubbed "galactic seismology", led them to the conclusion that the ripples were likely released hundreds of millions of years ago.
To be precise, they were released at the same time that the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy last crashed through our galaxy — it has done so on more than one occasion, the researchers said, adding that the effect is somewhat like dropping a stone into a pond. Ripples from the collision slowly made their way to the outer reaches of the Milky Way, diminishing in intensity as they went.
The Milky Way's interactions with other galaxies play a massive role in the shape and structure of the galaxy that is our home. A 2011 study, for example, suggested the Milky Way's spiral arm was formed due to collisions with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. All in all, the new findings add to a growing body of knowledge about our own galaxy's cannibalistic past. The Milky Way is known to have ingested several
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