Our Milky Way Devoured a Galaxy 11.8 Billion Years Ago. Another Crash May Happen in 4.5 Billion Years
Researchers identified globular clusters from a dwarf galaxy merger that helped build the Milky Way and involved about 500 million solar masses.
- Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered evidence that the Milky Way swallowed a dwarf galaxy named Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles roughly 11.8 billion years ago, representing the galaxy's earliest-known merger.
- Our galaxy has grown for billions of years by absorbing smaller neighbors, including the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus galaxy about 10 billion years ago and the ongoing merger with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.
- Lead author Davide Massari of the Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna and his team analyzed 39 globular clusters using Hubble data, achieving "unprecedented precision" in measuring the age and chemical content of these clusters.
- This finding settles long-standing debates regarding whether ancient stars in the galactic center grew natively or immigrated, proving that LKH infused the young Milky Way with significant volumes of stars and interstellar gas.
- Researchers plan to continue scouring globular clusters for evidence of other ancient events, with Dr. Massari noting "as we probe more of the galaxy and we get more data, then we might be able to recover evidence" for additional mergers.
15 Articles
15 Articles
The Economic Times
Times of IndiaOur Milky Way devoured a galaxy 11.8 billion years ago. Another crash may happen in 4.5 billion years
The Milky Way swallowed a smaller dwarf galaxy about 11.8 billion years ago, marking the earliest known merger in its history. Scientists used Hubble and Gaia observations to trace stars linked to the ancient galaxy, named Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles. The Milky Way later absorbed other galaxies and may collide with Andromeda in about 4.5 billion years.
Irish Independent
The Straits TimesThe Milky Way devoured a smaller galaxy about 11.8 billion years ago
Galactic archaeologists find stars in the Milky Way came from another galaxy 12 billion years ago
An illustration shows a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. MellingerLook up on a dark night and the Milky Way appears as a calm band of stars across the sky. But our galaxy has a violent past. For more than 13 billion years it has grown through star formation and m…
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