Thanks to a breakthrough robotic innovation, an international collaboration that includes the University of Toronto has advanced the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a 20-year-long research project that has been investigating the structure and evolution of our cosmic home, the Milky Way galaxy.
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The Milky Way as we know it today was shaped by a collision with a dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago. But most of the modern galaxy was already in place even at that early date, new research shows.
Nature Astronomy. And that could mean that the Milky Way grew up faster than astronomers expected, says study author Ted Mackereth, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto.
“The Milky Way had already built up a lot of itself before this big merger happened,” he says.
Our galaxy’s history is one of violent conquest. Like other giant spiral galaxies in the universe, the Milky Way probably built up its bulk by colliding and merging with smaller galaxies over time. Stars from the unfortunate devoured galaxies got mixed into the Milky Way like cream into coffee, making it difficult to figure out what the galaxies were like before they merged.