Astronomers have revealed their prediction of a possible collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Though people may still have a few billion years to prepare for it, this prediction also reveals how Milky Way came to be as it is. In fact, a recent study shows that the Milky Way may have collided with another galaxy and they believe that it has been in collision with Antlia 2, a recently discovered smaller galaxy.
It was in late 2018 when scientists were able to discover a dwarf galaxy in the orbit of the Milky Way. Due to its extremely low density, astronomers considered it as a rather unusual object in space. While its size can be likened to the satellite galaxy of the Large Magellanic Cloud, it is 10,000 times more diffuse comparatively. The researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology said that the current state of the Antlia 2 and what seemed like perplexing ripples in the hydrogen disk of the Milky Way.
The European Space Agency has collected the data via Gaia satellite, the team of Sukanya Chakrabarti worked on the calculation of the Antlia 2 trajectory. Based on the models that they have generated, Antlia 2 may have collided with the Milky Way galaxy some billions of years ago. Such collision did not have any two stars from the two galaxies collide. It is important to note that galaxies are mostly empty space. However, the gravitational interaction may have caused some stars to fling into deep space while others may have moved from one galaxy to another. Clouds of space dust may have also merged creating that uptick star formation.
The Milky Way galaxy remains to be like how it was before it collided with Antlia 2. However, the smaller galaxy was the one that mostly wreaked the havoc of the collision. The gravity from its larger neighbor in space has caused it to lose some of its stars and cosmic dust. This may account for the current diffuse state that this galaxy has.
The team has also looked into the models they generated to rule out another candidate that may have caused the ripples in the Milky Way. The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy didn't show signs that it collided with the Milky Way. This fact alone may help solve the mystery of the ripple in the Milky Way.
Scientists remain hopeful that when they continue to study Antlia 2 and the orbit where it is moving, they would be able to reveal some of the clues that will help explain the dark matter. This is another mystery in space that scientists are still far from uncovering, not even to understand.
