All articles tagged with #stellar migration
Astronomers using Gaia data found Sun-like stars, including the Sun, clustered around 4–6 billion years old at similar distances from the Galactic center, implying the Sun migrated outward from the core; this migration helps time the Milky Way's corotation barrier and suggests moving away from the center aided life’s emergence on Earth.
A recent study suggests that the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies may already be exchanging stars, with hypervelocity stars (HVSs) potentially migrating from Andromeda to the Milky Way. These HVSs, among the fastest objects in the Galaxy, are believed to be ejected due to gravitational interactions between binary stars and black holes. The study calculated the trajectories of 18 million HVSs and found that a small percentage are now within a radius of 50kpc around the Milky Way center. The team's simulations suggest that it is highly likely for HVSs from Andromeda to migrate to the Milky Way, and further studies are needed to detect them based on stellar velocity and trajectories.