Our nearest galactic neighbor is the Andromeda galaxy and it seems that it has been concealing a dark past. The researchers from the University of Michigan found that this baleful body cannibalized our sister roughly 2 billion years ago. That is correct, the Milky Way, at one instance, had a sister galaxy, and it was gulped down by Andromeda.

Researchers have been conscious for some time that a huge galaxy similar to Andromeda possibly gobbled smaller galaxies surrounding it; that is where the stars’ halo neighboring Andromeda comes from. However, there was actually no means to find how many galaxies it had devoured throughout its existence, nor how voracious its appetite might have been. However, using computer models now, scientists have found that much of that external halo is in fact made of one huge galaxy that was harshly shredded by Andromeda.

The sister galaxy, named M32p, was enormous, 3rd in size only to the Milky Way and Andromeda in our tiny part of the universe. In addition, this finding might also resolve a secondary anonymity: Andromeda has a tiny satellite galaxy, M32, and researchers don’t recognize where it created. Using this hypothesis, they can infer that the compact, dense galaxy is essentially the remains of M32p.

Not only does this finding assist the researchers to understand more regarding the universe around us, how galaxies evolve and how we got here, however, it also proposes to us just how mean Andromeda is. Though our huge and threatening neighbor isn’t essentially coming for us anytime soon, it is going to occur ultimately, and we should be ready for the clash.

A while back, a small satellite, named HaloSat, has been launched by NASA from the International Space Station to look into the halo of extremely hot gas near the Milky Way. This can assist the researchers to track down the enormous sum of missing matter within the universe.