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BOB HIRSHON (host):
A galactic merger. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
By building a 3-D map of our galaxy, astronomers have recently discovered what may very well be our nearest galactic neighbor. It’s so faint and so close that on a flat map of the sky it looks just like an average part of the Milky Way. But astronomer Robert Lupton of Princeton University says it’s actually a separate galaxy the Milky Way is slowly dragging in.
ROBERT LUPTON (Princeton University):
If you took a space ship and you waited a long time and you went out to a distance of 30 or 40 thousand light years away from the earth, then two out of every three stars would belong to this feature.
HIRHSON:
He says this neighbor will eventually merge with the Milky Way—and it’s probably not the only one. The 3-D mapping technique will likely reveal more small galactic neighbors.
I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.