{
  "id": 3010717,
  "title": "The earliest galaxy 'swallowed' by the cannibal Milky Way left a scar at its heart",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/the-earliest-galaxy-swallowed-by-the-cannibal-milky-way-left-a-scar",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-24T12:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Space.com",
    "slug": "space-com",
    "url": "https://www.space.com/astronomy/galaxies/the-earliest-galaxy-swallowed-by-the-cannibal-milky-way-left-a-scar-at-its-heart"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The Milky Way, known for its cannibalistic past, has consumed smaller galaxies throughout its existence. Recently, astronomers unveiled the earliest evidence of this destructive behavior in the form of scars at the heart of our galaxy, left behind by a dwarf galaxy it devoured around 12 billion years ago. Utilizing globular clusters as cosmic tracers, the team behind this discovery, part of the ARMA project, identified a merger that occurred 1.8 billion years earlier than the previously known earliest event. Prior to this, the history of the Milky Way's collisions and mergers was only reconstructed up to 10 billion years ago, approximately 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang. The earliest galactic cannibalism involved the collision with Gaia-Enceladus, a dwarf galaxy, around 10 billion years ago. This discovery sheds light on a significant event that shaped the Milky Way's evolution, offering insights into the origin of humanity's galactic home. The Hubble Space Telescope played a crucial role in this breakthrough, enabling astronomers to refine the ages of globular clusters with unprecedented precision. The third group of globular clusters found at the core of our galaxy can be traced back to this ancient duel, revealing a once-unknown merger event. The devoured dwarf galaxy, similar in mass to Gaia-Enceladus, contributed most of its matter to the Milky Way within 20,000 light-years of its center. The researchers named this formative cosmic event Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles (LKH), a tribute to the three papers that initially posited the existence of this ancient galactic encounter. The team's findings, published in Nature Astronomy on August 17, provide a glimpse into the Milky Way's formative years, answering a fundamental question about our cosmic origins.",
  "summary": "The earliest example of the Milky Way cannibalising a smaller galaxy for its growth involved a cosmic meal that left a scar at the heart of our galaxy.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Big Think",
        "title": "NASA’s Hubble opens the earliest window into the young Milky Way",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/nasas-hubble-opens-the-earliest-window-into-the-young-milky-way",
        "published": "2026-08-24T06:00:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}