The Milky Way Ate Another Galaxy. Scientists Say They’ve Found the Scraps
The stars may be remnants of Loki, a dwarf galaxy that could help explain how the Milky Way built its disk.
- Astronomers identified 20 metal-poor stars near the Milky Way's disk using European Space Agency Gaia telescope observations, likely tracing a dwarf galaxy dubbed "Loki" that the galaxy consumed about 10 billion years ago.
- The Milky Way grows through "galactic cannibalism," absorbing smaller galaxies over time; the leftover shreds enable astronomers to assemble the galaxy's "eating history," said Dr. Alexander Ji, assistant professor in the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
- Observations using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii revealed these stars are older than 10 billion years and located roughly 7,000 light-years away, with eleven in prograde orbits and nine moving retrogradely.
- Sestito named the ancient dwarf galaxy Loki after the Norse god of mischief because its origins were "hard to decipher," helping astronomers piece together missing chapters of the Milky Way's formation history.
- Dr. Hans-Walter Rix, director of the department of galaxies and cosmology at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, noted the merger was almost on the scale of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus event, suggesting the Milky Way's formation history is more significant than currently understood.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Are they coming from outside our galaxy? Astronomers have investigated a group of 20 mysterious stars. They could have a common origin.
An unusual collection of stars could represent the vestiges of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way devoured about 10 billion years ago. Astronomers have baptized this ancient galaxy as Loki, in honor of the Nordic god of...
Astronomers have just discovered an unprecedented group of metalless stars, which would mean that they would belong to an unknown galaxy, probably swallowed by the Milky Way about 10 billion years ago. 10 billion years ago, the Milky Way most likely swallowed up one or more mysterious galaxies. This would explain why it is so important. Until now, scientists have failed to prove it. But research published in the May edition of the Monthly Notice…
An unusual collection of stars could represent the vestiges of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way devoured about 10 billion years ago. Astronomers have baptized this ancient galaxy as Loki, in honor of the Nordic god of mischief. This finding could alter the current understanding of how the Milky Way evolved in the remote past. The immense Milky Way spans about 100,000 light years and contains between 100,000 and 400,000 million stars, according …
An unusual group of stars could be the remains of a dwarf galaxy swallowed by the Milky Way about 10 billion years ago, according to a recent study published in the journal "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomic Society. Astronomers called this ancient galaxy "Loki," inspired by northern mythology, according to CNN. The discovery could bring significant changes in the understanding of galactic evolution. Scientists have found 20 ancient stars …
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