Uploads from Dr. Becky

Currently Playing: A 12 billion year old fossil found inside the Milky Way

AD | Get started with Brilliant’s tutor for free at https://brilliant.org/drbecky and save 20% off an annual subscription | Hubble just added a chapter to the Milky Way’s entire origins story, and we’ve got to talk about it. Because this month, Massari and collaborators published this research paper claiming to have found evidence for another galaxy merger in the Milky Way’s past, nearly 12 billion years ago. The Milky Way is our home, a galaxy of 100s of billions of stars, including the Sun and the solar system. From what we can tell living inside of it, it’s a beautiful spiral shape that’s 13.6 billion years old. But how did it evolve over those billions of years to end up looking like this? That’s an area of research known as galactic archeology; digging through the evidence left behind to work out what happened in the past. And all our previous research has pointed towards two mergers with other galaxies in the Milky Way’s past. One that’s still ongoing, and one that happened 10 billion years ago. Until now. Papers mentioned: Massari et al. (2026) - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02931-5 Belokurov et al. (2018) - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/478/1/611/5032586?login=false Previous videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq0zyA6Yr7o 00:00 - Introduction 00:15 - I - What is galactic archaeology? 06:06 - II - What's been found by Massari et al. using Hubble 09:23 - III - What's the future of galactic archaeology look like? 13:02 - Bloopers Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com