Gaia's latest data drop reveals 'starquakes' and 'primordial material' pretty close to home.
Meanwhile, the spectroscopy data breaks down starlight like a prism to reveal the contents, distance, and potential origins of the sun’s relatives. Gaia found primordial Big Bang material in some stellar signatures, along with an abundance of metal in denizens at the Milky Way’s core.
“Our galaxy is a beautiful melting pot of stars,” Alejandra Recio-Blanco, a galactic archaeologist at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France,. “This diversity is extremely important, because it tells us the story of our galaxy’s formation. It reveals the processes of migration and accretion. It also clearly shows that our sun, and we, all belong to an ever changing system, formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gas of different origins.
Watch the video below for a deeper dive on the new Gaia information—and a teaser of what’s next for the mission.Purbita Saha is the Deputy Editor at Popular Science. She leads the magazine’s science desk and internship program and also edits features, reads book galleys, guest stars on “Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” and tweets bad jokes from the @PopSci account. Contact the author