Scientists Discover We Might Already Be Contacting the Andromeda Galaxy

As bright flames cast smoke into the starry night our galaxies have a halo that goes into the darkness as well. This large region, known as circumgalactic medium (CGM), holds approximately 70 per cent of the luminous mass of a galaxy.

Nevertheless the constitutional nature of the CGM is wide spread all across the Universe but still is very much ambiguous due to which it becomes highly difficult as to identify either which part of one galaxy halo belongs to a distinct galaxy.

The scientists regarding this information found that a new study of a galaxy about 270 million light-years from Earth has given researchers a picture of how this CGM and the luminous disc of the galaxy are linked, and it may be that our own galaxy is larger than we realised.

Such an outcome brings up an interesting question as to whether the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, which are expected to merge in the future, are already in the process of thisinteraction at least in the context of their CGM.

Scientists from Australia and U. S. used the Keck Cosmic Web Imager, an advanced equipment to take images of the small spiral galaxy called IRAS08 or IRAS08339+6517.

So, earlier investigations of the CGM were carried out by employing the light coming from the background galaxies – which, although informative, shed light only on a specific part of the halo. As the technology captured not only the glowing disc version expanding 90,000 light-years in diameter but also changes in the medium’s composition.

Using the cosmic web, they saw filamentary structures of the neutral atomic hydrogen gas connecting the IRAS08 galaxy to a much smaller neighbour galaxy as well as ionised hydrogen gas with oxygen further away from the main body of IRAS08 galaxy.

“We discovered it everywhere we tried to locate it and that was actually thrilling and perhaps a little shocking,” shares the lead author Nikole Nielsen, an astrophysics fellow from Swinburne University in Australia.

In the intergalactic space there are basically only atoms and these can be heated by starlight or by contact with other atoms. Studying the spectra, the scientists plotted ionization across thousands of light years, and observed a trend of dimming influence of the starlight of IRAS08.

Heating of the gas in the CGM is happening due to a number of circumstances different from the general conditions in galaxies: diffuse emissions from other galaxies and, maybe, shock waves, Nielsen adds.

This discovery not only helped experts to better define galaxy boundaries, but also given greater insights into the matter and dust fog evolution and mutual transformations.

Because Earth is located in the Milky Way, it becomes rather challenging to determine how large the region of the galaxy really is. Though the chance exists that the CGM of our galaxy is already in touch with the halo of our closest neighbor.

Nielsen himself says rather confidently, ‘It is quite probable that the CGMs of the Milky Way and Andromeda are already in contact and interaction. ’

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