Trouble Near the Milky Way: One Galaxy Is Tearing Another Apart

Something dramatic is happening in the Milky Way’s neighbourhood, but it is not a sudden explosion or a collision we could watch unfold in real time. The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two dwarf galaxies near our own, are locked in a long gravitational struggle that is reshaping one of them from the inside.

New observations suggest the smaller galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, is being pulled apart by the stronger gravity of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Space.com reported that the latest work shows the Small Magellanic Cloud is not simply rotating neatly, as once thought, but has stars moving outward in a pattern that points to tidal disruption.