How did the Milky Way form? Astrophysicists at the University of Notre Dame are working on a detailed map to try an answer that question.

Three professors and their colleagues have published their findings in Nature Physics. This after working up a model of how our galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion years ago.

It’s based on more than three decades of work that suggest The Milky Way was formed by the merging and accretion of small mini-halo galaxies containing stars and gas. It also states that the oldest stars in the galaxy are located in its center, and gives an excellent glimpse of how galaxies form.

It also shows how the same process combines smaller galaxies into much larger ones.