According to the results of a recent scientific investigation in Germany, parts of the Milky Way are several billion years older than previously thought. Current data evaluations have shown that a large number of ancient stars follow orbits similar to those of the Sun, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam announced on Wednesday. As a result, the so-called “thin disk of the Milky Way” is believed to have formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, between 4 and 5 billion years earlier than previously thought.
Significant correction of the galactic age
Until now, it was assumed that the thin disk of the Milky Way formed between 8 and 10 billion years ago. Now, very old stars discovered there using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission have been found to be more than 10 billion years old. Some are even more than 13 billion years old, the research revealed. This means that new insights into the development of the galaxy are now available.
Understanding how the Milky Way formed is a major goal of galactic archaeology, he said. This would require detailed maps of the galaxy showing the age, chemical composition and motions of stars.
According to the Leibniz Institute, the Milky Way consists of a thick and a thin disk, among other things. Most stars are therefore located in the thin disk and follow an organised rotation around the galactic centre. The research team analysed data from more than 800,000 stars at a distance of around 3,200 light years in the vicinity of the Sun, which is around 4.6 billion years old.
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