The history and future of the Milky Way galaxy
The history and future of the Milky Way galaxy
Blog Article
The Milky Way galaxy is home to Earth and millions of stars. If we consider the center of the Milky Way to be a city, we live on its outskirts, at a distance of 25,000 to 30,000 light years from the center of the city. In addition to how galaxies are formed and evolved, scientists also research their future. Do you know what the fate of the Milky Way will be? Stay with the telescope until the end of this article to find the answer to this question.
A big collision in the future
The Milky Way galaxy is located in the local group, which contains more than 30 galaxies, including Andromeda, Triangle and Leo 1. The Milky Way is moving towards Andromeda at a speed of 250,000 miles per hour (400,000 kilometers per hour). There's nothing to worry about yet, though, because this big collision won't happen for another 4 billion years.
NASA and other space agencies have been observing distant galaxy collisions for decades to gain insight into the consequences of the Andromeda-Milky Way collision. The investigation of the collision of three galaxies in 2022 using the Hubble Space Telescope provided scientists with interesting information. The largest galaxy, when it was in a tight orbit with two other galaxies, attracted some matter with its relatively stronger gravity.
This caused an interesting streak of gas, dust and other things to flow towards this galaxy that could even be seen from Earth. While the arms of the Milky Way will surely be destroyed by the collision with Andromeda, individual stars are relatively unscathed. Because the spaces between them are very big.
In other words, stellar collisions will practically not occur. However, star birth is accelerated by the amount of gas being pumped into our galaxy. As a result, the Milky Way will become brighter millions of years after the collision, and its population of celestial objects will increase.
Our solar system will be almost unscathed due to the low probability of a stellar collision. As the merger progresses, we may end up on a completely different path around a new galactic center. One consequence of this collision is that the constellations we see from Earth may change as the orbits of the stars change or new stars are added.
However, we are so far away from this encounter that the constellations we see today will change anyway due to the natural birth and death of stars.
Mapping the history of the Milky Way galaxy
The evolution of our galaxy is still shrouded in mystery. The field of galactic archeology is slowly unraveling the mysteries of life in the Milky Way thanks to the Gaia mission, which released its first data catalog in 2018.
Also, there is evidence that the Milky Way has collided with several smaller galaxies during its evolution. In 2018, a team of Dutch astronomers found a cluster of 30,000 stars in the neighborhood of the Sun moving in the opposite direction to the rest of the stars in the dataset.
Their motion pattern matched what scientists had previously seen in computer simulations of galactic collisions. The stars also differed in color and brightness, suggesting they came from a different galaxy. Another, slightly younger, impact remnant was found a year later.
The Milky Way continues to swallow up smaller galaxies to this day. A galaxy called Sagittarius is currently orbiting near the Milky Way and has probably collided with its disk several times in the past 7 billion years.
Using data from Gaia, scientists found that these collisions initiate periods of intense star formation in the Milky Way and may even contribute to its famous spiral shape. Our sun was born in one of these periods about 4.6 billion years ago.
The future of Milky Way research
The Gaia mission has updated its list of massive stars three times since its launch. Astronomers around the world continue to analyze this data in search of new patterns and discoveries.
Gaia data is currently generating more research papers than even the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft will continue to map the galaxy until at least 2025, and the information it collects will keep astronomers busy for decades to come.
Before Gaia, the largest data set on the positions and distances of stars in the Milky Way came from a satellite called Hipparchus. Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer who mapped the night sky 150 BC.
The Hipparchus satellite saw only about 100,000 bright stars in the Sun's neighborhood, while Gaia detected a billion stars. Also, the Hipparchus data were less accurate. Although Gaia sees less than 1 percent of the galaxy's stars, astronomers can extrapolate their findings and model the behavior of the entire Milky Way.