The cardinal region of the Milky Way is a slow and interfering property . It is home to   a supermassive black trap ( Sagittarius A * ) and a huge tightness of adept bonk as the Nuclear Star Cluster . In just 26 unclouded - years , there are roughly 20 million stars . Now   Modern enquiry report in three studies ( here , here , andhere ) advise that a small fraction of these hotshot did not imprint there .

An estimated 7   pct of the stars in the Nuclear Star Cluster have distinct property compared to the remaining stellar bodies .   In particular , this universe has a unlike chemical composition compare to other stars : they are   poorer in elements heavier than both He and H , they move faster than the other star , and the motion of their reach appears tilted with respect to the disk of the Milky Way .

These clues led   astronomers to put forrard the hypothesis the stars organize together away from the core of the Milky Way . Yet   question remain : where did they take shape and when did they   get together the old star ? When the   team ran advanced computer pretending , they found these stars in all likelihood come to be in the Nuclear Star Cluster within the last 5 billion years .

For their birthplace , the team investigated the two most likely places . The headliner may   have once been the nitty-gritty of a nanus galaxy orbit the Milky Way or one of the many globular clusters of stars that exist around our galaxy .   The most probable scenario come across a globular cluster take shape between 10,000 and   16,000 light - long time from the center of the Milky Way . This new universe ’s properties check well with what we see in other   globular clusters around the Milky Way .

“ Our results signal that an infall of a rather nearby stellar cluster from the Milky agency itself is more likely , ” Centennial State - author Dr Nadie Neumayer , from the Max Planck Institute For Astronomy , said in astatement .

“ Although an extragalactic origin of the stars can not be completely ruled out , it is rather unlikely , ” contribute Dr Manuel Arca Sedda , ESO astronomer and lead author of one of the document . “ This is an extra sign of the zodiac that the cardinal atomic star cluster in the extragalactic nebula is at least partly the result of the impingement of little cluster . ”

The paper were published inThe Astrophysical Journal Lettersand in theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .