Crumb stars suggest Milky Way was cannibalistic

By Jessica Shugart on 7 March, 2013

Hovering stars spotted within the Milky Way’s halo hint at our galaxy’s gluttonous past.

Billions of years after going on a cannibalistic binge, our own Milky Way galaxy has been implicated by the stale crumbs it left behind.

Astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used Hubble Space Telescope data to spot the crumbs – ancient stars thought to be remnants of a dwarf galaxy engulfed by our hungry Milky Way when it was still young.

The finding, to be published in the upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal, supports the hypothesis that the Milky Way grew by pulling in smaller galaxies and claiming them as its own.

Read the full post at CNN Light Years.

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About Jessica Shugart

I got into scientific research to unravel the never-ending complexity behind seemingly simple things. Through the lens of science, boring colorless liquids teem with DNA molecules, and lonesome stars twinkling in the distance harbor families of planets. As an immunologist, I strained to see the molecular signals that turn T cells into murderers of microbes. Yet as each tiny new piece of data came in, I realized that the part of science I loved the most was the telling of it. A plain old bar graph combined with just the right vivid metaphor could illuminate a whole new world—not just for my readers, but also for me. As a science writer, I hope to pull back the veil of jargon that too often separates us from the most human of endeavors.

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Crumb stars suggest Milky Way was cannibalistic

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