Our galaxy is still 'reeling' from a recent impact where another star system tore straight through it

'Smoking gun' proves that massive object tore straight through our Milky Way galaxy
Collision 100 million years ago - very recently in cosmological terms
Uneven stars prove that galaxy is still 'ringing' from impact

By Rob Waugh

PUBLISHED: 09:08 EST, 3 July 2012 | UPDATED: 09:09 EST, 3 July 2012

Our galaxy, the Milky way is still 'ringing' from a cosmic impact where a smaller galaxy tore through it - and the terrifying collision happened just 100 million years ago, very recently in cosmological terms.

The 'smoking gun' was telltale vibrations in nearby stars, which astronomers claim is the equivalent of a 'ringing' sound left by the enormous impact.

The collision - either with a tiny galaxy or a hurtling ball of mysterious 'dark matter' - left our galaxy with unevenly distributed stars, as if a wave was passing through it.
Our galaxy, the Milky way is still 'ringing' from a cosmic impact where a smaller galaxy tore through it - and the terrifying collision happened just 100 million years ago, very recently in cosmological time

Our galaxy, the Milky way is still 'ringing' from a cosmic impact where a smaller galaxy tore through it - and the terrifying collision happened just 100 million years ago, very recently in cosmological time

A team of astronomers from Canada and the United States have discovered what may well be the smoking gun of such an encounter, one that occurred close to our position in the galaxy and relatively recently, at least in the cosmological sense.

‘We have found evidence that our Milky Way had an encounter with a small galaxy or massive dark matter structure perhaps as recently as 100 million years ago,’ said Larry Widrow, professor at Queen’s University in Canada.



‘We clearly observe unexpected differences in the Milky Way’s stellar distribution above and below the galaxy’s midplane that have the appearance of a vertical wave -- something that nobody has seen before.’

The discovery is based on observations of some 300,000 nearby Milky Way stars by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Stars in the disk of the Milky Way move up and down at a speed of about 20-30 kilometers per second while orbiting the center of the galaxy at a brisk 220 kilometers per second.
The 'smoking gun' is an uneven distribution of stars which seems to hint that a massive object such as another galaxy passed straight through the Milky Way



Widrow and his four collaborators from the University of Kentucky, the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have found that the positions and motions of these nearby stars weren’t quite as regular as previously thought.

‘Our part of the Milky Way is ringing like a bell,’ said Brian Yanny, of the Department of Energy’s Fermilab. ‘But we have not been able to identify the celestial object that passed through the Milky Way. It could have been one of the small satellite galaxies that move around the center of our galaxy, or an invisible structure such as a dark matter halo.’

Adds Susan Gardner, professor of physics at the University of Kentucky: ‘The perturbation need not have been a single isolated event in the past, and it may even be ongoing. Additional observations may well clarify its origin.’

The 'smoking gun' is an uneven distribution of stars which seems to hint that a massive object such as another galaxy passed straight through the Milky Way

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2168215/Our-galaxy-reeling-recent-impact-star-blasted-through.html#ixzz1zr96r4Jd

Very interesting : )

i thought so too... never heard anything like this before...

That is interesting!