The Formation of the Milky Way Galaxy - The Secret of the Universe

The Milky Way has been around a long, long time. The age of our galaxy is approximately 13.6 billion years, give or take 800 million years. But how did the galaxy get here? What did baby photos of the Milky Way look like?

First off, there weren’t always stars in the Universe, and the Milky Way hasn’t been around forever. After the big bang happened, and the Universe cooled for a bit, all there was was gas uniformly spread throughout. Small irregularities allowed the gas to coalesce into larger and larger enough clumps, heating up and eventually starting the nuclear fusion that powers stars. The stars started to gravitationally attract each other into larger groups. The oldest of these groups of stars are called globular clusters, and some of these clusters in the Milky Way galaxy date back to the very, very early Universe.

Not all of the stars in the Milky Way date back to the primordial Universe, though. The Milky Way produces more than 7 stars per year, but it acquired much of its mass in another fashion. The Milky Way is often referred to as a “cannibal” galaxy, because during formation it swallowed up smaller galaxies. Astronomers think that this is how many larger galaxies have come to be the size they are today.

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