New measurements show our Milky Way galaxy may not actually be the shape we thought. And this shape can tell about past collisions with galaxies and even entire galactic clusters, according to Space.. com.

In recent years, scientists have come to the conclusion that galaxies are mainly divided into three types: elliptical, irregular and spiral.. Most of the galaxies that make up the last group have two prominent "

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But traditional images of the Milky Way show it as a galaxy with four arms that radiate from a thick central cluster of stars.. This makes our galaxy unique and suggests that it has some special properties that allowed the four arms to evolve..

But such a picture of the Milky Way may be wrong.. In a new study, astronomers claim that scientists have been wrong for decades and in fact our galaxy has only two arms, like its other "

The discovery was made when scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Astronomical Observatory analyzed several sources of astronomical data.. They sought to understand what caused such an unusual shape of the Milky Way..

During the study, scientists studied data from modern instruments, thanks to which they were able to measure the distance of up to 200 stars.. Then they started mapping the Milky Way. The researchers also used data from the Gaia observatory, which monitors the movements of stars and their position relative to the Earth..

Scientists have focused on hot and massive stars, which are called OB stars in the Gaia data.. Because these stars are short-lived, they move very little during their lives, making them useful for mapping purposes.. Data collected from 24,000 OB stars has been added to the map, as well as Gaia observations of more than 1,000 open galaxy clusters.

These data showed that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with only two arms extending from it..

On the outskirts of the Milky Way, scientists say, are distant and scattered, irregularly shaped arms that are not connected to the central bulge that houses the main stars.. The fragmentation of the spiral arms may be related to the collision of the Milky Way with other galaxies or even galaxy clusters in its ancient history..

Previously, scientists managed to find the " They identified a group of 18 thousand stars that existed in the "