Gaia Space Telescope Discovers Streams of Stars That Reveal Our Galaxy's History – Newsbomb – News

Two streams of stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, discovered by the Gaia space telescope

Space telescope Gaia to European Space Agency (ESA) He made an interesting discovery. Two streams of stars, formed more than 12 billion years ago, have been discovered, further enriching the history date to Galaxy we.

The two streams are named Shakti And shiva, Help shape it Galaxy we. Both are so ancient that they likely formed even before the oldest parts of the arms and spiral disk that exist today Galaxy.

“What's really amazing is that we can discover these ancient structures.”He says head Research from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Khayati Malhan. “Our galaxy has changed so significantly since the birth of these stars that we did not expect to clearly recognize them as a group, but the unprecedented data we are getting from Gaia makes that possible.”

all the point It has a mass of approx 10 million suns, With the stars of life 12 to 13 billion years ago Which all move along very similar paths and with a similar structure. The way they are distributed suggests that they may have formed as separate parts that merged with the galaxy early in its life. Although the two streams are very similar, they are not identical. Shakti stars orbit slightly farther from the galactic center and in more circular orbits than stars Shiva.

And Two streams And they are towards his heart Galaxy. The telescope explored this part of it Galaxy the 2022 Using types “Hungarian archeology”, Which showed that the region is filled with the oldest stars in the entire galaxy, all of which were born before the galactic disk was properly formed.

“The stars there are so old that they lack many of the heavy metals that were created later in the life of the universe. These heavy metals are the ones that form inside stars and are dispersed into space when they die. The stars at the core of our galaxy are poor in metals, so we named this region “The poor old heart of our galaxy.”“, says one of its authors Stady, From the same institute, Hans-Walter Rex, leads a “galactic archaeologist” in the research.

Almost before 12 billion years, or Galaxy It seemed completely different to us than it does today. It is believed that it was formed as a result of several long, narrow, irregular filaments of gas and dust coming together to form stars and wrap around each other to generate the Milky Way as we know it. The Shakti and Shiva streams seem to be two of these elements.