ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Galaxies aren’t good neighbors. They can stretch and pull the galaxies around them, rip them apart, and even gobble them up.
A case in point is the Magellanic Clouds – the largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 165,000 light-years away. It’s about a third as wide as the Milky Way, and perhaps one-tenth as massive. The small cloud is a little smaller and farther away. Both of them are being distorted by the Milky Way’s gravity. And both may be incorporated into the Milky Way billions of years from now.
But they’re also interacting with each other. In fact, a recent study says the gravity of the large cloud may be ripping the smaller one apart.
Researchers have studied the system for more than a decade from an observatory in Chile. They’ve measured the motions of millions of stars. And they found that the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud aren’t moving the way they expected.
Most models say the galaxy forms a rotating disk, like the Milky Way. But the observations revealed that most of the stars are moving outward – away from the center of the galaxy. And that applied even to the stars in the center itself.
The most likely cause is the pull of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its gravity is dragging the stars away from their galactic home. That could eventually rip the smaller galaxy apart – leaving only some shredded remnants for the Milky Way.
Script by Damond Benningfield
