Proof of the Milky Method’s previous is encoded in wrinkles of stars, whose positions and actions have shifted as our galaxy has interacted with different galaxies, generally violently. Now, a group of astronomers say that the latest of these cosmic collisions was billions of years later than was thought, making the Milky Method that we all know and love a a lot youthful entity than beforehand believed.

Principally, as a substitute of the celebs arriving about eight billion years in the past, the brand new information signifies they might have come from a merger simply three billion years in the past—far more not too long ago, even when it comes to the universe’s whole age: 13.77 billion years previous.

The astronomers’ discovering was made utilizing information from ESA’s Gaia house telescope, which launched in December 2013. Gaia’s third information launch was printed in 2022, and consists of information the researchers say suggests a newer merger than these beforehand recognized. The group’s evaluation of the Gaia information was printed final month in Month-to-month Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“For the wrinkles of stars to be as clear as they seem in Gaia information, they should have joined us lower than three billion years in the past—a minimum of 5 billion years later than was beforehand thought,” mentioned research co-author Heidi Jo Newberg, an astronomer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in an ESA launch. “New wrinkles of stars kind every time the celebs swing forwards and backwards by means of the centre of the Milky Method. In the event that they’d joined us eight billion years in the past, there could be so many wrinkles proper subsequent to one another that we might not see them as separate options.”

The area of curiosity within the Gaia information is the Milky Method’s interior stellar halo. This space incorporates a stretch with a excessive focus of iron and hydrogen. The celebs on this stretch have eccentric orbits in comparison with the encircling stars. As a consequence of their irregularity, this element of the halo is known as the “final main merger,” indicating the latest intergalactic encounter that helped form our trendy Milky Method. By finding out how the Milky Method’s wrinkles clean out over time, researchers can decide the timing of our galaxy’s mixing with others.

“We get wrinklier as we age, however our work reveals that the alternative is true for the Milky Method,” mentioned Thomas Donlon, an astronomer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the College of Alabama, and lead writer of the research, in the identical launch. “It’s a form of cosmic Benjamin Button, getting much less wrinkly over time.”

The three-billion-year-old collision possible occurred between the Milky Method and a dwarf galaxy, Donlon added. It might be unusual to consider the Milky Method as an eclectic agglomeration of stars of various ages, however the current paper suggests precisely that: We’re only a galactic melting pot, ripe for telescopes to sift by means of to know when completely different elements have been added.

Extra: Astronomers Discover the Fringe of Our Galaxy