Posted on by Alan Boyle

Scientists Track How a Giant Wave Moved Through Our Galactic Backyard

Illustration: Radcliffe Wave model
This illustration shows how the Radcliffe Wave moves through the backyard of our sun (shown as a yellow dot). The white line represents the wave's current shape and motion. Magenta and green lines show how the wave is expected to move over time. (Credit: Ralf Konietzka, Alyssa Goodman and WorldWide Telescope via CfA)

Astronomers say there’s a wave rippling through our galactic neighborhood that’s playing a part in the birth and death of stars — and perhaps in Earth’s history as well.

The cosmic ripple, known as the Radcliffe Wave, was identified in astronomical data four years ago — but in a follow-up study published today by the journal Nature, a research team lays out fresh evidence that the wave is actually waving, like the wave that fans in a sports stadium create by taking turns standing up and sitting down.

“Similar to how fans in a stadium are being pulled back to their seats by the Earth’s gravity, the Radcliffe Wave oscillates due to the gravity of the Milky Way,” study lead author Ralf Konietzka, a researcher at Harvard and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA, said in a news release. 

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Posted on by Evan Gough

Gaia has Already Given Us 5 New Insights Into the Milky Way

The ESA's Gaia mission is currently on a five-year mission to map the stars of the Milky Way. Gaia has found evidence for a galactic collision that occurred between 300 million and 900 million years ago. Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier.
The ESA's Gaia mission is currently on a five-year mission to map the stars of the Milky Way. Gaia has found evidence for a galactic collision that occurred between 300 million and 900 million years ago. Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier.

The European Space Agency launched the Gaia mission in 2013. The mission’s overall goal was to discover the history of the Milky Way by mapping out the positions and velocities of one billion stars. The result is kind of like a movie that shows the past and the future of our galaxy.

The mission has released two separate, massive data sets for researchers to work through, with a third data release expected soon. All that data has spawned a stream of studies into our home galaxy.

Recently, the ESA drew attention to five new insights into the Milky Way galaxy. Allof these discoveries directly stemmed from the Gaia spacecraft.

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