Hubble Proves Milky Way Devoured A Massive Galaxy Billions Of Years Ago
Astronomers have uncovered concrete evidence of the earliest known galactic merger in the Milky Way's history, whereby our home galaxy devoured a dwarf galaxy nearly 12 billion years ago to fuel its initial growth spurts.
Detailed in a study led by astronomer Davide Massari, the discovery pushes back the known timeline of our galaxy’s major construction events by 1.8 billion years. By analyzing the orbits, ages, and chemical compositions of stellar clusters to reconstruct the primal catastrophe, Massari and his team concluded that this event occurred around 11.8 billion years ago, just two billion years after the Big Bang. The consumed entity, an ancient dwarf galaxy known to astronomers as Kraken (or Low-energy Kraken/Heracles), is likely one of the most substantial and influential mergers in Milky Way history.
The scientists estimate that at the time of the cataclysmic merger, LKH contained a stellar mass equivalent to roughly 500 million Suns,...
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