We welcome guests from another galaxy. Supercomputers have discovered a stream of stars falling into the Milky Way
Thanks to the latest data collected by the Gaia space observatory, scientists have identified in our direct star environment a vast stream of stars that did not form in our galaxy, and are only now joining it. Nix, because this name was given to this peculiar stream, is most likely a remnant of a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way. Most often, these types of streams are only memories of former globular clusters or dwarf galaxies, which as a result of tidal interactions with the Milky Way were first stretched, and eventually burst and absorbed by our galaxy. Nix was discovered in a rather unusual way, which perfectly shows how new scientific discoveries occur in today’s astronomy and astrophysics. FIRE! Lina Necib deals with the kinematics of stars and dark matter in the Milky Way. If we have groups, density of stars moving in the same characteristic way, then usually there is also a reason why they move in the same way. Since 2014, as part of the FIRE (Feedback in R...