Science For Sleep | The Milky Way Ate a Galaxy — And It's Still Around Us

Now on Spotify 🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/033FAXP... Long ago, our galaxy was not alone. In this episode, the Milky Way ate a galaxy — and it’s still around us becomes a calm journey into the ancient collision known as the Gaia Sausage. Billions of years ago, a smaller galaxy crashed into the young Milky Way and was slowly torn apart by gravity. Its stars did not vanish. They were scattered into strange orbits, leaving behind a hidden fossil record still moving through our galaxy today. This ancient merger helped shape the Milky Way’s halo, its structure, and the story of how our cosmic home grew over time. Let this gentle exploration of the Gaia Sausage and the galaxy the Milky Way ate settle softly into your thoughts. Breathe slowly. Imagine ancient stars drifting around us, carrying the memory of a galaxy long gone. And rest in the stillness of a universe where even cosmic collisions can leave quiet traces behind. Sources: ESA “Gaia uncovers major event in the formation of the Milky Way” — https://www.esa.int/Science_Explorati... Helmi et al. 2018, Nature “The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way’s inner stellar halo and thick disk” — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... Belokurov et al. / Simons Foundation “The Gaia Sausage: The Major Collision That Changed the Milky Way” — https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2018... Myeong et al. 2018 “The Sausage Globular Clusters” — https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00453 Merrow et al. 2024, MNRAS “Did the Gaia Enceladus/Sausage merger form the Milky Way’s bar?” — https://academic.oup.com/mnras/articl...