Weblog
30 September 2022
NASA JPL-Caltech R. Damage (SSC Caltech)
Once you think about the collision of galaxies, you most likely consider one thing violent and transformational. Spiral arms ripped aside, stars colliding, cats and canine residing collectively, mass hysteria. The truth is far much less dramatic. As a current research exhibits, our galaxy is in a collision proper now.
Though the large collision between the Milky Approach and the Andromeda Galaxy remains to be but to return, our galaxy has undergone galactic collisions previously. Essentially the most well-understood collision is that between the Milky Approach and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. This small galaxy first impacted the Milky Approach about 6 billion years in the past and will have triggered the star-forming interval that produced our Solar.
ESA
However collisions on a galactic scale are sluggish and tedious. Over billions of years, the core of the Sagittarius galaxy has struck the Milky Approach a couple of instances as it’s progressively ripped aside. It might now be seen as arcs of stars encircling our galaxy. It stands to cause that such an historic collision is lengthy over, however this current research exhibits it nonetheless has ripple results on the Milky Approach. Actually.
The workforce used knowledge from the Gaia spacecraft and regarded on the movement of stars close to the outer fringe of the Milky Approach. The velocities of those stars confirmed a rippled distribution of movement, created by Sagittarius the best way a dropped stone would possibly set off ripples on a pond. General the celebrities on the outer fringe of the Milky Approach aren’t in gravitational equilibrium, which is a elaborate method of claiming our galaxy remains to be feeling the results of the collision.
The workforce was shocked by the extent of element the Gaia knowledge offered. By measuring the positions of greater than two billion stars, and the motions of greater than 30 million, Gaia has given the workforce a form of galactic seismology that can be utilized to hint the dynamic historical past and evolution of the Milky Approach.
Galactic collisions are dramatic on cosmic scales. They’re a central strategy of galactic evolution that may set off star formation, black gap mergers, and the formation of huge elliptical galaxies. However as this newest work exhibits, on a human scale, it’s all simply one other day for all times on Earth.
