Astronomers find Milky Way's 1st merger 11.8 billion years ago
Technology
Turns out, our galaxy had its first big "cosmic meal" way back.
Astronomers just found evidence that the Milky Way merged with a smaller galaxy called Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles (LKH) about 11.8 billion years ago.
That's only 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe itself was still pretty young.
Hubble and Gaia reveal low-energy-Kraken-Heracles stars
Researchers used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Gaia mission to study ancient star clusters near our galaxy's center.
By looking at how these stars move and what they're made of, they spotted a group that clearly came from LKH.
This ancient merger helped shape the Milky Way and even sparked new generations of stars, pretty wild to think about when you look up at the night sky.