Question: How did the Milky Way form?
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wow. Thankyou
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Hey @google, tough question.
The Milky Way, like many other galaxies formed over a very long period of time. One thing they need in common is a ‘seed’ which can be big gas clouds or a group of stars together. Gravity then causes these stars to come closer together and like a ballerina spinning on her toes with her arms out, she can slowly bring her arms closer to her body and spinning faster when she does. The faster it spins the more of a flat disk the galaxy becomes.
The original stars now hang around in the centre which we call the Milky Way halo. The gasesand other stuff that is spinning around in the arms of the galaxy are where the newer stars are born like our Sun.
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As Mick said, the Milky Way formed over time as more and more stars formed from the clouds of gas and dust scattered through the universe. There are ideas that astronomers have called “hierarchical formation”, which means that larger galaxies formed from the collection of smaller pieces, or “monolithic collapse”, where you have one great big cloud and everything sort of forms together as the cloud gets bunched together by gravity. The former is favored by the evidence we currently have, I think, but we don’t completely know all the details of the process.
If you’re interested in being an astronomer, this is maybe one of the questions that you can help to answer!
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