{"id":18934,"date":"2026-07-30T04:39:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T04:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?p=18934"},"modified":"2026-07-30T04:39:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T04:39:42","slug":"meet-the-astronomer-digging-into-the-milky-ways-fossils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?p=18934","title":{"rendered":"Meet the astronomer digging into the Milky Way&#8217;s &#8216;fossils&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <div style=\"display: grid; grid-template-columns: 300px 160px; gap: 2px; width: 460px; background: #eee; padding: 2px;\">\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u6574\u884c\u5bbd\u5e7f\u544a -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column: 1\/-1; width: 460px; height: 250px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876674\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column: 1\/-1; width: 460px; height: 90px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876676\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u5de6\u4fa7\u7ad6\u6392 -->\r\n  <div style=\"height: 250px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876672\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n  <div style=\"height: 500px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876680\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u53f3\u4fa7\u6469\u5929\u697c\uff08\u548c\u5de6\u4fa7\u5b8c\u5168\u5bf9\u9f50\uff09 -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-row: 3\/5; height: 750px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876678\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n  \r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e6\" data-zoneid=\"5876682\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": {}});<\/script>\r\n<\/div><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-right:0;padding-left:0\">\n<p>Amina Helmi\u2019s passion for the Milky Way is clear as soon as one steps into her small office at the University of Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p>Alongside family photos and piled-up dissertations with impenetrable titles sits a bowl stacked with the chocolates named after the star system she has spent her career studying.<\/p>\n<p>Digging into the Milky Way\u2019s violent past has earned this 55-year-old astronomer, originally from Argentina, the Kavli Prize, widely seen as the Nobel Prize of astrophysics.<\/p>\n<p>Helmi is a world expert in a field known as galactic archaeology, which aims to decipher what has happened to our galaxy in the past and get a glimpse of its future by using stars as \u201ccosmic fossils.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can measure, for example, the amount of chemicals in the stars,\u201d Helmi told AFP in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis works as a kind of DNA of a star in the sense that they preserve information of where they were born and in which environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Forget the typical image of an astronomer with eyes glued to a telescope scanning the celestial sphere.<\/p>\n<p>Helmi fixes her eyes on vast catalogues of data \u2014 sometimes with two billion lines of information \u2014 containing precious information about the stars.<\/p>\n<p>The European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia mission, which aimed to form a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, was a key turning point for Helmi\u2019s research.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat measured the motions of about one and a half billion stars over a much larger volume than before,\u201d said Helmi, who contributed to the mission herself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just the huge number of objects, but also how accurately we could measure the motions, how precisely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 \u2018Speechless\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n<p>The data from the Gaia mission allowed Helmi and her team to piece together the events that changed our home galaxy forever.<\/p>\n<p>Around 10 billion years ago, well before our Sun and the stars we can see today were born, a dwarf galaxy, Gaia-Enceladus, collided with what was the Milky Way at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The two galaxies fused and the stars now present are part of a halo that surrounds our home galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>New stars were also created as a consequence of the cosmic collision, creating a \u201cpuffed up\u201d disk that is a feature of the Milky Way, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery proved that the Milky Way was formed from a series of crashes with other galaxies, not via a smooth and steady growth as previously thought.<\/p>\n<p>The work earned Helmi a share of the Kavli Prize, along with Vasily Belokurov (University of Cambridge) and Rodrigo Ibata (University of Strasbourg).<\/p>\n<p>Helmi also won a share of the $1 million prize fund, a medal, and a citation, due to be presented in September at a ceremony organised by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo.<\/p>\n<p>The trio of scientists were praised for \u201cuncovering the fossil evidence of past mergers proving that the Milky Way galaxy was built through hierarchical accretion\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Helmi admitted to being \u201ctotally speechless\u201d when she found out she was to receive the coveted award.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, this is indeed the biggest there is. And it\u2019s just absolutely unbelievable,\u201d she told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think also for our field, which is relatively young but has grown enormously in the last years, this is also a very nice recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What does the future hold? Helmi is looking forward to poring over more data from the Gaia mission as well as working on new ways to model the huge data sets.<\/p>\n<p>And what does the Milky Way\u2019s turbulent past tell us about the future?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing much has happened\u201d since then, said Helmi.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you could say it\u2019s been a wild youth and now a quiet, restful adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- \u603b\u5bb9\u5668\uff1a\u6700\u5927\u5bbd908px Grid\u7d27\u51d1\u5e03\u5c40 -->\r\n<div style=\"display: grid; grid-template-columns: 728px 160px; gap:2px; width:908px; background:#eee; padding:2px;\">\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u901a\u680f\u9876\u90e8\uff1a\u6700\u5927\u6a2a\u5e45 908x258 \u8de8\u6574\u884c -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column:1\/-1; height:258px; background:#ff6b6b; display:grid; place-items:center;\">\r\n    <!-- JuicyAds v3.0 -->\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async src=\"https:\/\/poweredby.jads.co\/js\/jads.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins id=\"1114307\" data-width=\"908\" data-height=\"258\"><\/ins>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async>(adsbyjuicy = window.adsbyjuicy || []).push({'adzone':1114307});<\/script>\r\n<!--JuicyAds END-->\r\n  <\/div>\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u7b2c\u4e8c\u901a\u680f\uff1a728\u00d790 \u901a\u680f -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column:1\/-1; 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height:600px;  display:grid; place-items:center;\">\r\n    <!-- JuicyAds v3.0 -->\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async src=\"https:\/\/poweredby.jads.co\/js\/jads.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins id=\"1114301\" data-width=\"160\" data-height=\"600\"><\/ins>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async>(adsbyjuicy = window.adsbyjuicy || []).push({'adzone':1114301});<\/script>\r\n<!--JuicyAds END-->\r\n  <\/div>\r\n\r\n<\/div><br \/>\n<br \/> Meet the astronomer digging into the Milky Way&#8217;s &#8216;fossils&#8217;<br \/>\n<br \/>#Meet #astronomer #digging #Milky #Ways #fossils<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amina Helmi\u2019s passion for the Milky Way is clear as soon as one steps into&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14836,14837,14838,76,9313,2661],"class_list":["post-18934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-astronomer","tag-digging","tag-fossils","tag-meet","tag-milky","tag-ways"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4-300x189.jpg",300,189,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",640,403,false],"large":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",640,403,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4.jpg",768,483,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4-540x340.jpg",540,340,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/931f54b521c90ae2f8e12e5dd7d4738c91b187b4-400x250.jpg",400,250,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?author=1"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?cat=7\" rel=\"category\">Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}