cientists Now Know: We're Not From Here!
Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone
Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call
"Mum" and "Dad" and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually
adopted!
This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the
Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band
of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a
strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy!
How can this be?
Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a
major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University
of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have
baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is
consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing
galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal,
is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show
in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through
our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the
Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by
the bigger Milky Way
