The scientists said, what distinguishes the milky way from other galaxies

The researchers made an unusual statement.

“We use the milky Way and its environment to study everything. Every year hundreds of papers about dark matter, cosmology, formation of stars and galaxies, the authors are guided by our Galaxy as a typical case. However, it is possible that the milky Way is the exception, ” says astrophysicist from Yale University Marla Gekha.

In an article published in the Astrophysical Journal, Marla Gekha and her colleagues analyzed data from the inspection of the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA), devoted to the study of a relatively large galaxies like the milky Way, as well as their environment – smaller galaxies-satellites, like our neighbors, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. The authors note that if the environment of our Galaxy is quite quiet and inconspicuous, in most other large galaxies, the satellites exhibit high activity and produce a new young star at a decent pace.

While the SAGA review covered only eight galaxies like the milky Way and its satellites 14. Necessary data about another 13 small galaxies managed to get through previously conducted the observations, and another 11 are waiting for corrections and additions. Meanwhile, scientists have studied information about 27 galaxies-satellites, 26 of whom noted a long star formation. For comparison, this activity is demonstrated only about 40% of the approximately 30 satellites of the milky Way.

“Our work puts the milky Way in a broader context. Review of the SAGA will bring us new understanding and the process of galaxy formation, the nature of dark matter”, explains one of the study’s authors, an astrophysicist from Stanford University Risa Wechsler.

It is planned that in the next couple of years SAGA collects about 25 galaxies “analogues” of the milky Way, located within 130 million light-years, and by the end of their work – at least 100.

paradox