Shakti And Shiva: The Ancient Building Blocks Of Our Galaxy

Our Milky Way galaxy is dazzling with billions of stars, nebulae, and swirling cosmic dust. But how did this magnificent spiral come into existence? The origins of our galactic home have long captivated astronomers, and recent discoveries have unveiled some of its earliest threads. Astronomers have found two ancient groups of stars - named after the Hindu deities Shakti and Shiva, which are among the Milky Way's earliest building blocks. The discovery was made using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia space telescope.

These vast structures contain the mass of 10 million suns and are up to 13 billion years old. "The Milky Way has changed so significantly since these stars were born that we wouldn't expect to recognise them so clearly as a group - but the unprecedented data we're getting from Gaia made it possible," says Khyati Malhan of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, who led the research. ESA's Gaia space observatory has played a pivotal role in this quest, meticulously creating an extraordinary three-dimensional map of over a billion stars within the Milky Way and beyond. "The stars there are so ancient that they lack many of the heavier metal elements created later in the Universe's lifetime. These heavy metals are those forged within stars and scattered through space when they die. The stars in our galaxy's heart are metal-poor, so we dubbed this region the Milky Way's 'poor old heart'," says co-author Hans-Walter Rix.

FROM MYTHOLOGY TO ASTRONOMY: SHAKTI AND SHIVA ILLUMINATE MILKY WAY'S PAST

According to Hinduism, the union between Shakti and Shiva gave birth to the cosmos. Shakti represents the feminine divine principle, the creative force of the universe, while Shiva embodies the masculine principle, the transformative and destructive aspects of reality. These names beautifully capture the dynamic interplay of creation and destruction that likely shaped our Milky Way in its early years.

India has also actively participated in unraveling the mysteries of our cosmic neighborhood through the Chandrayaan mission series, spearheaded by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Notably, the landing site of Chandrayaan-3 has been named ShivShakti point, reflecting India's rich cultural heritage and its growing role in space exploration.

Going back to the latest discovery, each star within the Shiva and Shakti streams carries a unique chemical fingerprint, a record of the elements present at its birth. Comparing their compositions with those of stars in the Milky Way can reveal their origins and how these ancient mergers enriched our galaxy with new elements, potentially influencing the formation of later generations of stars and planets.

ESA's Gaia space telescope was launched on 19 December 2013 and has been surveying our galaxy since 2014.By meticulously mapping the velocity, position, and trajectory of over 1.5 billion stars within our galaxy, Gaia's observations empower astronomers to establish links among clusters of stars that share similar origins, aiding in the reconstruction of our galaxy's past. This cosmic census also allows scientists to look back through the fabric of time, and add to our understanding about how it all began.