The Milky Way had 'devoured' another galaxy billions of years ago

By using data from the Gaia space telescope, researchers were able to decipher part of the question about our Milky past.

About 10 billion years ago, the Milky Way looked very different from the present. To reach the size of today, the Milky Way might have "swallowed" another dwarf galaxy in "young" days.

When the universe was in its early stages about 13 billion years ago, stars quickly formed and created the first dwarf galaxies, containing between 100 million and a few billion stars.

The dwarf galaxies that merge together form the larger galaxy today. The Milky Way is an example, currently containing between 200 and 400 billion stars.

The Milky Way galaxy currently contains between 200 and 400 billion stars.(Photo: CNN).

Researching the Milky Way history is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. By using data from the Gaia space telescope, researchers were able to decipher part of the question about the Milky Way past.

Researchers have looked at the early stage of the Milky Way formation, and made the most accurate calculations to determine the distance, brightness and position of stars.

The Milky Way's galaxy (the extended sphere of a galaxy extending beyond the main part) is visible, consisting of two components. One contains many blue stars and the other contains many red stars. Through a measurement study, blue stars were identified as remnants of a dwarf galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus.

The composition of the Milky Way.(Photo: ESA).

"Analysis of data from Gaia shows that the age of stars in both components is nearly the same and older than the stars in the thick disk , " said Chris Brook, an expert at Astruto de Astrofísica de Canarias. said. (Thick disks are structural components that account for two-thirds of the disk-shaped galaxy, including the Milky Way).

"The final piece of the puzzle is the amount of 'heavy' elements, or it can be said that the element is not hydrogen or helium in stars. The amount of heavy elements in blue stars is less than red stars." Tomás Ruiz Lara, research co-author, of the Astruto de Astrofísica de Canarias Academy, said.

After two merging galaxies created the Milky Way, the Milky Way was four times larger than it is today and also contained more heavy elements.

About 10 billion years ago, two galaxies collided violently and Gaia-Enceladus became part of the Milky Way. Stars inside the two galaxies also move in collision and create the halo of galaxies as we see them today.

Disk galaxies are disk-shaped galaxies, the central region is disk-shaped or not.(Photo: Wikipedia).

The unification caused intense explosions due to star formation and lasted about 4 billion years. In the end, the remaining dust and gas created a thin disk that still exists today. New stars are still forming in this area of ​​the Milky Way.

"Observations from distant galaxies show that this consolidation happens quite often," said Matteo Monelli, a member of the research team.

This information provides "unprecedented detail" about the early history of our universe. However, this is not the first time people have heard of a galaxy "swallowing" another galaxy.

In fact, Andromeda's " neighbor" galaxy has "eaten" the nearby galaxy about two billion years ago and is on its way to "take over" our galaxy in the very future.