Family tree of the Milky Way deciphered
Scientists have known for some time that galaxies can grow by the merging of smaller galaxies, but the ancestry of our own Milky Way galaxy has been a long-standing mystery.
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Tau.Neutrino said:
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That’s quite different to simulations I’ve seen before, where the Milky Way transitions back and forth between a spiral galaxy and a barred spiral galaxy.
I’m surprised at how late in the process is becomes like the Milky Way we see today.
There’s essentially no spin at all until a third of the way through the video, at z near 1.4.
The first signs that it may be becoming a spiral galaxy don’t occur until half way through, at z near 0.8.
There are no spiral arms until about z = 0.3.
Even at the very end the spiral arms aren’t all that well defined.
I’d expect the growth to be faster earlier, expect it to pick up spin quite soon. With very little growth in the final stages where the intercluster filaments thin out. We’re in the middle of a thin filament, so growth would be expected to stall as the filament stretches and thins out.