Milky Way Collided With Gaia Sausage 10 Billion Years Ago | WION News

[00:00:00]For billions of years, the Milky Way has been spinning through space carrying hundreds of billions of stars and planets including ours within it. But astronomers have now got evidence that our cosmic home have suffered a pretty dramatic upheaval in the distant past.

[00:00:15]The galaxy that we see today may have been knocked sideways in a colossal encounter with another massive galaxy.

[00:00:23]Take a look at these images.

[00:00:26]>> [music] >> Look up at the night sky.

[00:00:35]>> [music] >> And the Milky Way appears stable.

[00:00:40]A vast river [music] of stars stretches across the blackness.

[00:00:47]But the galaxy >> [music] >> is not as calm as it looks.

[00:00:54]Deep inside its structure, astronomers have found clues that something enormous happened in the Milky Way's [music] ancient past.

[00:01:03]The evidence points to a cosmic collision.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> Scientists studying the motion of stars have found unusual patterns that suggest the Milky Way's disc may have been dramatically tilted [music] or even flipped on its side.

[00:01:21]The discovery offers a new explanation for strange movements seen among stars far from the galactic center.

[00:01:29]The likely culprit could be a collision with a smaller dwarf galaxy.

[00:01:35]Billions of years ago, the Milky Way may have encountered another galaxy [music] traveling on a different trajectory.

[00:01:44]The gravitational [music] forces involved would have been immense.

[00:01:49]Imagine two enormous [music] whirlpools colliding.

[00:01:55]The sheer kinetic force of this impact sent shock waves through the galactic disc.

[00:02:01]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Instead of surviving unscathed, the entire Milky Way tilted violently, [music] flipping nearly 90° on its axis.

[00:02:40]And there's something even more remarkable.

[00:02:42]The Milky Way is still changing.

[00:02:46]It continues to interact with nearby galaxies. It is slowly consuming smaller satellite galaxies, and billions of years from now, it is expected to collide with the Andromeda [music] galaxy.

[00:03:00]The night sky we know today is temporary. Our galaxy has already survived cosmic violence of a [music] unimaginable scale.

[00:03:10]And the stars are still carrying the evidence.

[00:03:14]Bureau report, we are World is one.

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