Humanity’s home galaxy ‘died’ at some point in its history before experiencing a dramatic ‘rebirth’, a Japanese scientist has claimed. Academics at Tohoku University believe the Milky Way experienced a dark age when the formation of new stars dramatically stopped. But this grim era may have sparked a process which led to the galaxy’s glorious Second Coming and take the form which allowed intelligent life to spring up on one of its spinning arms.
‘The Milky Way galaxy has died once before and we are now in what is considered its second life,’ the university announced in a statement. ‘Stars formed in two different epochs through different mechanisms. ‘There was a long dormant period between when star formation ceased. Our home galaxy has turned out to have a more dramatic history than was originally thought.’
A scientist called Masafumi Noguchi calculated the evolution of the Milky Way over the past 10 billion years. He found that the history of our galaxy is ‘inscribed in the elemental composition of stars’ because they take on the composition of whatever gas they formed from. This means they ‘memorise’ events in the past because they show which gas was present during their birth.
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