Scientists have discovered something incredible—the "ancient heart" of the Milky Way! It’s a group of about 18,000 stars that are some of the oldest in our galaxy, dating back more than 12 billion years. These stars formed when the universe was young and the Milky Way was just starting to take shape. They’re located deep in the center of the galaxy, in a region astronomers had a hard time studying because of all the dust and gas in the way. Using advanced telescopes and special tools, scientists were able to peek through the cosmic clutter and find these stars, giving us a glimpse into the Milky Way’s earliest days. Credit: Supermassive Black Hole: By NASA, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22554706 Cosmic Fossil: By ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Niederhofer, L. Girardi, https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-observes-a-cosmic-fossil/ X-ray Spots: By NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10991, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Young_Star_Flaunts_its_X-ray_Spots.ogv Gaia: By ESA, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_unravels_the_ancient_threads_of_the_Milky_Way PIA18928: By NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toledo; E. Safron et al. - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18928, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39170894 Magnetized Threads: NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D. Wang; Radio: NRF/SARAO/MeerKAT, https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/magnetized-threads-weave-spectacular-galactic-tapestry-2/ Boy oh Boy: By RAK Records, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23034104 Sagittarius A*: By X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR: NASA/HST/STScI. Inset: Radio (EHT Collaboration), https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/sagittarius-nasa-telescopes-support-event-horizon-telescope-studying-milky-ways-black-hole/ Milky-Way: By Evan-Amos, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31556058 The Milky Way Galaxy: By NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech), https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-milky-way-galaxy/ CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: GAIA: By DLR German Aerospace Center - https://flic.kr/p/npCLpn, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32945546 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Schéma-gaia: By Pline, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30246024 Maquette de Gaia: By Pline, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26837220 HR-diag: By Spacepotato, Rursus, Bhutajata, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2093830 CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/: Gaia: By ESA/Gaia/DPAC, https://science.nasa.gov/mission/gaia/ sky from Gaia: By ESA/Gaia/DPAC., A. Moitinho., https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/12/The_colour_of_the_sky_from_Gaia_s_Early_Data_Release_3, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97227885 the Milky Way: By Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Milky Way: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. Acknowledgement: A. Moitinho., https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119243221, https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/06/Gaia_observes_the_Milky_Way multi-dimensional Milky Way: By ESA/Gaia/DPAC, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119242974, https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/06/Gaia_Exploring_the_multi-dimensional_Milky_Way OortGAIA: By ESA/Gaia/DPAC - https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3-where-do-the-stars-go-or-come-from, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119418419 Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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00:00Hold on to your telescope, space rat!
00:04Scientists have made an astonishing discovery!
00:06They've found the ancient heart of the Milky Way galaxy!
00:10But what is this ancient heart, and what does it tell us about the history of our galaxy?
00:15Let's find out!
00:16Is that it?
00:17Yes, and thank you, Captain Jack!
00:20My pleasure!
00:21What can I say, he's a space pirate!
00:24The Milky Way isn't just a candy bar, but a majestic spiral galaxy that's home to
00:29billions of stars, planets, and other celestial objects, and it's all spread out over a
00:35distance of about 100,000 light-years.
00:38The Milky Way has a distinct shape, with a central bulge and spiral arms that extend
00:44out from it, kinda like what I look like from the side.
00:47The spiral arms are like the suburbs, where the stars are more spread out, and the neighborhoods
00:52are quieter.
00:53They're made up of gas, dust, and stars that all move together in a circular pattern
00:58around the center.
01:00In between the spiral arms, there are vast regions of empty space, known as interstellar
01:05space.
01:06Here, you can find wispy clouds of gas and dust, as well as some of the most spectacular
01:12sights in the galaxy, like massive star-forming regions and colorful nebulas.
01:18The Milky Way is also surrounded by a huge halo of dark matter, a mysterious substance
01:23that we can't see but can feel its gravitational effects on the galaxy.
01:28This halo helps to hold the galaxy together, and it extends out much farther than the visible
01:34parts of the Milky Way.
01:36And finally, here's the center.
01:38Here, the most action happens.
01:40In the center of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole, which is about 4
01:45million times more massive than our Sun, Sagittarius A star.
01:50This black hole is responsible for some of the most energetic events in the galaxy, like
01:56the emission of powerful jets of energy.
01:58Remember the famous first photo of a black hole that flew across the Internet?
02:03It was Sagittarius A star.
02:06We managed to capture this black hole because it's the closest one to us.
02:10All in all, the center of the Milky Way is full of stars that are tightly packed together,
02:16forming a dense cluster.
02:17And it was here that astronomers recently made a new epic discovery.
02:22The heart of our Milky Way galaxy has been found, and boy oh boy, is it an old-timer.
02:28Hey, who you calling an old-timer?
02:31Now a team of brilliant scientists have found a cluster of 18,000 stars, born right after
02:37the Big Bang.
02:39Together they formed the ancient nucleus of our Milky Way.
02:42These stars date back to a time when our galaxy was just a wee little baby, a mere
02:47collection of proto-galaxies, huddling together to form a bigger and better thing.
02:53The scientists called it the poor old heart of our Milky Way.
02:56Can you believe it?
02:58These ancient stars are over 12.5 billion years old.
03:02And yeah, maybe they account for a mere 0.2% of our galaxy's total mass.
03:08But that doesn't matter.
03:10These stars are the building blocks that form the core around which all the other stars
03:15and planets took shape.
03:17But how exactly did they become this heart of the galaxy?
03:21How did they form?
03:22And how did we discover all that?
03:24To answer these questions, we'll have to plunge into the past, a very, very distant
03:29past.
03:31Once upon a time, about 14 billion years ago, there was the Big Bang.
03:36Our universe was born.
03:38At first, it was incredibly hot, but as time passed, things started to cool down, and tiny
03:44pockets of gas began to clump together due to the force of gravity.
03:49These were the first galaxies.
03:51The Milky Way is one of these galaxies.
03:53It also started as a small clump of gas and dust, but over time, it began to take shape.
04:00The very first stars, proto-stars, began to form within the clouds, and their gravitational
04:06pull caused more stuff to come together.
04:09This process continued for millions of years until the Milky Way was formed.
04:14But to learn the history of our galaxy in more detail, we need to find these proto-stars.
04:20And this is far from an easy task.
04:23Researchers have discovered the ancient heart using a neural network to analyze data from
04:27the European Space Agency's Gaia mission.
04:31The Gaia telescope is a space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2013.
04:37Its job is to map the position and movement of more than a billion stars in the Milky
04:42Way galaxy.
04:43A billion stars!
04:45It's like counting every grain of sand on a beach.
04:48It's a huge job, but Gaia is up to the task.
04:52So how do they do it?
04:53The telescope has two cameras that take pictures of the sky at the same time.
04:58These cameras are so powerful that they can detect stars that are a million times fainter
05:03than those visible to the naked eye.
05:06Gaia takes many pictures of each star, and this allows us to track their movements with
05:11incredible precision.
05:13Thanks to the data collected by Gaia, astronomers are learning more about the structure and
05:18history of the Milky Way.
05:19They've discovered new details about the stars, including their ages, temperatures,
05:24and chemical compositions.
05:26Gaia is also helping astronomers search for exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars outside
05:32of our solar system.
05:34So for this research, astronomers used Gaia and the most accurate 3D map of the Milky
05:39Way ever compiled.
05:41They had to analyze around 2 million stars to find the primordial group.
05:46One way that astronomers can determine the age of stars is by looking at its brightness
05:51and temperature.
05:53This way, they study a brief phase of stellar evolution known as sub-giants.
05:58But imagine searching through the huge center of the Milky Way for the tiniest group of
06:02stars that are older than 12.5 billion years.
06:06This is like searching for a needle in a haystack!
06:09Luckily, they had a trump card up their sleeve – metals.
06:13You see, in the early Universe, the cores of these stars were so hot and dense that
06:18they were able to smash atoms together to form heavier elements.
06:23These heavier elements are called metals in astronomy, even though they're not really
06:27metals like the ones we're used to.
06:30The more massive the star, the more metals it can create during its lifetime.
06:34When the life of the first stars came to an end, they made a big boom and scattered these
06:39metals all around.
06:41Metals mixed with other gases and joined the newborn stars, and so on.
06:46As time passed and the Universe got older, more and more generations of stars formed,
06:51each one richer in metals than the last.
06:54Can you guess what that means?
06:56The older the stars, the less metals they should have.
07:00So now it was time for some galactic archaeology.
07:04The team taught the AI to find the metal-porous most ancient stars, and it succeeded.
07:10It found a huge cluster, and all of them were within 30,000 light-years from the center
07:16of the Milky Way.
07:18Then they separated out the stars that formed the ancient heart from the stars that originated
07:23in a dwarf galaxy.
07:25And finally, we were left with the original stars around which the Milky Way grew.
07:31This discovery is incredible.
07:33It reveals the remnants of the Milky Way's earliest history.
07:37It turns out that simulations of the Milky Way's formation were spot on.
07:42The old stars existed just where they were predicted to be.
07:45Just imagine, the stars that remember our Universe as a baby are still hanging out in
07:51the center of our galaxy.
07:53Isn't that mind-boggling?
07:54So why is this such a big deal?
07:57Well, by studying these ancient stars, scientists have discovered some incredible things.
08:02For example, they've confirmed that the Milky Way's core began its life stationary
08:08and only picked up rotational speed as it grew.
08:11In other words, the Milky Way formed from the merging of three or four proto-galaxies,
08:17and these stars were its initial core.
08:20But even after billions of years and multiple mergers, the heart of the Milky Way has remained
08:25intact, like a sheltered oasis in the midst of cosmic chaos.
08:30All in all, the Milky Way is a vast and complex place, full of mysteries and wonders waiting
08:36to be discovered.
08:37It's a true marvel of the Universe, and we're lucky to call it our home.
08:43But the research isn't over yet.
08:45Scientists are eager to learn even more about the formation of the Milky Way, and hope to
08:49study these ancient stars in even greater detail.
08:53Who knows what secrets they might uncover?
08:56Maybe they'll even discover what types of supernovas exploded to create the elements
09:01we see today.
09:02So get ready, space rat!
09:05The adventure is just beginning!
09:07Arrrr!
09:08That's it for today!
09:09So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your
09:14friends!
09:15Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!