Milky Way's Ancient Heart Potentially Found

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Milky Way Galaxy - Sputnik International, 1920, 15.10.2022
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The team of researchers behind the new discovery made their findings by using data from two million stars located within 30 degrees of our galaxy’s center, provided by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia observatory.
Scientists have managed to discover what may well be the original center of our galaxy.
The collection of 18,000 of the oldest stars is located in the Sagittarius constellation and appears to be the very “kernel” around which the Milky Way grew, Live Science has reported.
"It has long been believed (on the basis of theory and simulations) that the very oldest stars are at the very center of a galaxy. We have now shown them to be there in great numbers," said Hans-Walter Rix, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg and lead author of the study. "It's like doing archeology in an old city. We have shown that the oldest and most primitive ruins are at the 'modern' city center."
During the course of their research, scientists used data collected by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia observatory on some two million stars located within 30 degrees of our galaxy’s center and looked for older and lower-mass stars with low metal content.
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The researchers have determined that these ancient stars rotate less around the galactic center compared to the younger ones, which seems to confirm previous observations that the core of our galaxy started off stationery and picked up rotational speed as the galaxy’s center of mass increased.
Also, their findings suggest that the core of our galaxy was not “invaded by collisions from other galaxies”, as the media outlet put it.
"The Milky Way never has been shook up dramatically," Rix said. "Our galaxy has lived a sheltered life."
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