In a stunning cosmic revelation, scientists have found that the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours is being torn apart. The finding comes from a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, based on data from the European Space Agency’s recently retired Gaia spacecraft.
The SMC, located just 200,000 light-years away, is a dwarf galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way. But it also has a larger galactic companion the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) whose gravitational pull may be slowly ripping the SMC apart.
Kengo Tachihara, an astronomer at Nagoya University in Japan, and co-lead of the research team said “When we first got this result, we suspected an error. But after a detailed check, the results were clear and surprising”.
Stars Moving in Opposite Directions
The researchers found something striking: stars on either side of the SMC are moving in opposite directions, a motion that suggests the galaxy is being gravitationally stretched. Some stars appear to be drifting toward the LMC, while others are pulling away from it.
Tachihara explained, “This strange motion indicates that the SMC may be heading for a gradual collapse due to the LMC’s pull.”
Even more surprising was the lack of rotational motion among the SMC’s massive stars. Normally, stars rotate around a galaxy’s center, but in the SMC, that rotation seems to be missing.
She also says “If the SMC doesn’t rotate, it challenges everything we thought we knew about its mass, structure, and past interactions with the LMC and Milky Way”.
Despite being just 7,000 light-years across (compared to the Milky Way’s 100,000), the SMC holds a unique place in astronomy. It orbits the Milky Way once every 1.5 billion years and is visible to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.
Because of its closeness and brightness, the SMC is a natural laboratory for studying how stars form and move processes that are much harder to observe in more distant galaxies.
Tachihara explained “We can’t step outside the Milky Way to study it from above but the SMC and LMC give us a detailed, side-on view of how galaxies behave.” The discovery paints a dramatic picture of galactic evolution and underlines how dynamic and sometimes violent the universe really is.
As researchers continue to explore Gaia’s treasure trove of data, the fate of the SMC may become a key chapter in understanding the life cycles of galaxies and their interactions across cosmic time.
