Our galaxy , the Milky Way , is a whorled galaxy . Its main components are a bulge at the substance , a flimsy disk and a thick disk where the spiral arms are located , and a glory . The slender phonograph record is believed to be the youngest component of the galaxy . So envisage how surprised stargazer were when they found some stars in it almost as older as the universe .
The fragile phonograph record is where the Solar System is . The Sun is halfway - aged , being around 5 billion years old , and the disk was believed to have started forming between 8 and 10 billion years ago . Still , there are uncertainties , so astronomers looked for erstwhile stars . At the root of the universe , only hydrogen , helium , and a flair of lithium were available . Ancient stars lean to have less “ contamination ” from heavier chemical element such as oxygen , carbon , or Fe .
So researchers set out to progress an historic period nose count of stars in the thin record within 3,200 light - years from the Sun . They found a surprising bit of stars which are very old . Most of these ancient stars are over 10 billion long time older . A few are over 13 , billion long time old . They formed when the universe was several hundred million geezerhood old .
" These ancient star topology in the disk suggest that the formation of the Milky Way ’s thin magnetic disk begin much earlier than antecedently believe , by about 4–5 billion yr , " lead author Samir Nepal from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam read in astatement .
The piece of work suggests two thing . First , the sparse disk of a galaxy can form pretty quick . This matches observation of ancient galax fromJWSTand the Atacama Large Millimeter Array ( ALMA ) . The whitish Way is now in line of work with the expectations from those remote observations .
The 2nd finding is that the Milky Way had to experience some somewhat intense star - constitution episode . The massive star from these episode that went supernova provide the enrichment in heavy ingredient seen throughout the disk .
" Our report suggest that the sparse disk of the Milky Way may have make much originally than we had thought , and that its formation is strongly related to the former chemical substance enrichment of the innermost realm of our galaxy , " explained co - author Dr Cristina Chiappini . " The combining of information from different sources and the app of innovative machine learn technique have enabled us to increase the number of asterisk with mellow lineament astral parameters , a key step to lead our squad to these new insights . "
The datum used in this report come from the European Space Agency missionGaia . The space vehicle continues to build the most precise map of the Milky Way galaxy , providing precise measure on the posture , question , and properties of billions of maven .
A paper discussing these results is accepted for publication inAstronomy & Astrophysics .
