Looking at the stars at night, one might think about how beautiful space is. Actually, it’s not. It’s a dog-eat-dog universe, where stars and galaxies devour each other. Even our gorgeous Milky Way galaxy has turned out to be a cheeky, insatiable thief who stole billions of stars when it collided with other galaxies.
An international team of scientists from Britain, Germany, and the United States has discovered what they called the oldest and the largest galactic merger in the history of the Milky Way. The researchers used a computer simulation to analyse globular clusters, a spherical collection of stars which orbit a galactic core. Astronomers say these clusters are fossils of ancient galaxies that our Milky Way swallowed up in the past.
According to the findings of the study, published in the October issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers discovered evidence of five galactic mergers, with each merger involving 100 million stars or more. The scientists say that among the five, there was one ancient galactic merger that hadn’t been documented before. It turned out to be the biggest and the oldest collision of galaxies. Because of its impressive size, the scientists dubbed the merger “Kraken”, after the mythical sea monster.
The discovery will not only help scientists create a family tree for the Milky Way, it will also shed light on what our galaxy looked like in its earliest days. The scientists say that it is likely Kraken is only a small piece of the galaxy formation puzzle and that at least 15 other galactic mergers could have occurred with our galaxy.
According to LiveScience, the researchers have about 3 or 4 billion years to find all the mergers before the Milky Way collides with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, currently located some 2.5 million light-years away from us.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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