New findings suggest our galaxy’s evolutionary history is strikingly different from all the others.
Researchers have found that there’s something highly unusual about the Milky Way that sets it apart from galaxies which, on a surface level, appear similar.
As detailed in three recent papers published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of researchers examined a mountain of data as part of the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) survey, which was dedicated to comparing the Milky Way to 101 other galaxies that are similar in mass.
The distinction is technical but significant, the researchers say: they found that the Milky Way has surprisingly few smaller satellite galaxies compared to its peers — and some of them have mysteriously stopped forming new stars.
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