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uranologist have expose shocking evidence that one of the closest galaxies to our own is being deplume to shred by its neighbour .
Located around 200,000 light - twelvemonth from Earth , the Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) is a midget beetleweed that , alongside its neighbor the Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC ) , is gravitationally bound to ourMilky elbow room . The two satellite galaxies orbit alongside ours and , in a few billion years , will collide and merge with the Milky Way .
A photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud captured by the Herschel Space Observatory.
But before that far - futurity date , a young psychoanalysis of star pattern has unwrap that a different fate may be in shop for the SMC : being torn asunder by its larger neighbor . This dire prognostication was published April 10 inThe Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series .
" When we first got this consequence , we suspected that there might be an fault in our method of analysis , " co - authorKengo Tachihara , an astronomer at Nagoya University in Japan , said in a statement . " However , upon close examination , the effect are indisputable , and we were surprised . "
Alongside our milklike Way and the LMC , the SMC is part of the Local Group , a accumulation of just about 30 extragalactic nebula in our cosmic backyard . The SMC ’s triangle - shaped patch ofa few hundred million starsis relatively little , measuring just 7,000 unclouded - years across compared to our own galax ’s 100,000 unclouded - year diameter , and lap the LMC once every 900 million years and the Milky Way aboutonce every 1.5 billion year .
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Yet despite the SMC ’s proximity to us , the galaxy ’s relatively small size and the obscuring effect of interstellar gas and detritus have made observing it tricky .
To peer into the SMC ’s inner works , the researchers turn to theEuropean Space Agency’srecently retired Gaia spacecraft , which mapped the positions of roughly 2 billion star within the Milky Way and its surrounding galaxies . By centre through Gaia ’s third data point departure , the stargazer chase after the motion of roughly 7,000 wizard from within the SMC to arrive at a shameful finding .
" The star in the SMC were moving in opposite directions on either side of the wandflower , as though they are being pulled apart , " Tachihara pronounce . " Some of these mavin are approaching the LMC , while others are make a motion away from it . ”
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This unexpected movement suggests that the LMC is tugging on its smaller companion , Tachihara said , " go to its gradual destruction . "
The researchers ' analysis also revealed that , unlike in our Milky Way , the monolithic stars tracked within the SMC were not rotating around the galaxy ’s axis . This indicate that something may be wrong with our discernment of the galaxy ’s mass and its chronicle of interactions with the LMC and the Milky Way .
Further discipline of these conundrums could uncover some key insights . The SMC ’s blue metallicity and weak gravitational potential energy means it resemble what many galaxies may have looked like during their babyhood in the former universe . This think that study the interactions between the SMC and the LMC could avail stargazer understand how galaxies were sculpted over time .
" We are unable to get a ' bird’s - eye vista ' of the galaxy in which we live – as a result , the SMC and the LMC are the only galaxy in which we can observe the item of starring movement , ” Tachihara note . “ This research is authoritative because it allows us to study the appendage of champion organization in connection with the motion of stars throughout the extragalactic nebula . "
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