Astronomers discover “big waves” spreading across the Milky Way on new maps of thousands of stars

New research reveals that giant “waves” are passing through our galaxy and pushing billions of stars in the future.

The waves of the Milky Way galaxy were discovered in the data mapping of the European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia Space Telescope.

Like the ripples of a pond, the waves have a huge impact. It will affect the 30,000 to 65,000 light-year stars from the Galaxy Center, ESA officials said in a statement. This is the majority of the Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light years.

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Astronomers still don’t know what has begun to move. ESA officials said it may have been a past conflict with a galaxy of small dwarfs that caused massive shaking, but further investigation is needed to answer that question.

The results were published on July 14th in Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Wave mapping

Gaia mapped the speed and movement of the stars for almost 12 years. In 2020, the telescope observed that the discs in the Milky Way wobble like a rotating top. The new waves were charted following the movement and position of young giant stars, and a series of Cepheids, stars with predictable but variable brightness.

“Since the young giant stars and Cepheid move along with the waves, scientists believe that gas in the disc may also be participating in this massive ripple,” an ESA official wrote in a statement. “It is possible that a young star retained a memory of wave information from the gas itself and was born from it.”

ESA officials compared the galaxy waves to “waves” carried out by stadium crowds. With group movements starting from one side of the stadium and moving section-by-section, the individual rises from his seat, stretches his arms out and stands fully before returning to sit.

When our galaxies are observed edge-on, we see a similar type of vibration motion. Such vertical movement, represented by arrows, indicates ripples of movement across the disc of the Milky Way.

“This observed behavior is consistent with what we expect from the waves,” lead author Eloisa Poggio, an astronomer at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, said in a statement.

The newly discovered waves may also be linked to the much smaller Milky Way ripples already known to scientists. Called the waves of Radcliffe, it can be seen from the sun, and is 9,000 light years extending throughout the universe.

“But Radcliffe’s waves are much smaller filaments, and they are located in different parts of the Galaxy disc compared to the waves studied in our work,” Poggio said. “The two waves may be related.