The New Story of the Milky Way's Surprisingly Turbulent Past

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February 01, 2024

This week, we're rewriting (galactic) history. Our top story, from Scientific American's February print edition, highlights a quiet, ongoing revolution in astronomy linked to our ever-better maps of the Milky Way. Contrary to (perhaps naive) expectation, our galaxy didn't form anywhere close to all at once in some singular cosmic birth. Instead, it formed from a large number of messy mergers between smaller galaxies and globular clusters—the evidence of which we still see today in stellar streams and other leftover debris scattered within and around the Milky Way. Researchers today are finding all sorts of surprises in their reconstruction of our galaxy's gradual assembly, unveiling new and unexpected chapters in the chronicle of our cosmic home. Elsewhere this week, we have stories on studying pseudorandom numbers, the citizen science opportunities of April's total eclipse, talking to whales (and aliens), and much more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Astronomy The New Story of the Milky Way's Surprisingly Turbulent Past The latest star maps are rewriting the story of our Milky Way, revealing a much more tumultuous history than astronomers suspected By Ann Finkbeiner

Particle Physics Why Aren't We Made of Antimatter? To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron By Luke Caldwell

Mathematics These Numbers Look Random but Aren't, Mathematicians Prove A new mathematical proof helps show whether a sequence of numbers is "pseudorandom" By Christopher Lutsko

Space Exploration Japan's SLIM Mission Is Revived on the Moon After a nine-day shutdown, the upside-down lunar lander received enough sunlight to power up again By Gemma Conroy,Nature magazine

Planetary Science How Far Away Is the Horizon? The edge of the world is closer than you think, and simple geometry proves it By Phil Plait

Animals Can 'Conversations' with Whales Teach Us to Talk with Aliens? A controversial 20-minute interaction with a humpback whale might help scientists communicate with extraterrestrials and nonhuman Earthlings alike By Avery Schuyler Nunn

Astrophysics First Space-Based Gravitational Wave Detector Gets Go-Ahead The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna could discover gigantic ripples in spacetime from merging supermassive black holes and more By Elizabeth Gibney,Nature magazine

Astronomy How You Can Participate in Solar Eclipse Research Volunteers can join several crowdsourced science projects during the total solar eclipse in April to contribute to research By Sarah Scoles

Artificial Intelligence AI Survey Exaggerates Apocalyptic Risks A speculative survey about AI's future may have been biased toward an alarmist perspective By Chris Stokel-Walker

Arts The Troubling Mysteries at the Heart of Nuclear Bombs Plutonium-pit secrets, growing up in parallel universes, the strange aftermath of a fictional wildfire, and more books out now By Amy Brady

Mathematics Tomorrow's Quantum Computers Threaten Today's Secrets. Here's How to Protect Them Researchers are racing to create codes so complex that even quantum computers can't break them By Kelsey Houston-Edwards

Quantum Computing Will Quantum Computers Upend Cryptography as We Know It? Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on. By Jeffery DelViscio | 10:35

QUOTE OF THE DAY "It's the single largest increase in astronomical knowledge in, like, forever. It's been shocking." Charlie Conroy, an astronomer at Harvard University, on modern high-resolution stellar maps of the Milky Way

FROM THE ARCHIVE The Galactic Collision That Reshaped Our Milky Way A new finding is shedding light on how our galaxy—and those throughout the universe—evolve By Shannon Hall | November 2018

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