Milky Way’s violent birth decoded

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  1. According to scientists, Milky Way was shaped in its present form as a result of collision with another smaller galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus, 10 billion years ago.
  2. The study has been based on data from the Gaia space observatory- a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA). Gaia seeks to map the positions of more than 1 billion stars to the highest precision
  3. The merger of the Milky Way and Gaia-Enceladus increased Milky Way’s mass by about a quarter and triggered a period of accelerated star formation which lasted for 2 to 4 billion years.
  4. Galaxies of all types began to form relatively soon after the Big Bang explosion. The Big Bang explosion marked the beginning of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago.
  5. However, the galaxies were relatively smaller that time and subsequent galactic mergers have given galaxies their present configuration.
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