It turns out that our galaxy looks the way it does today thanks to a run-in with something called the 'Gaia Sausage'. As greasy as space is, we're not talking cosmic processed foods here. Rather, astronomers have found signs that a small galaxy smashed into the Milky Way billions of years ago, leaving behind a mess of stars with some rather unusual orbits. So, what makes this cosmic object a 'sausage'? Cambridge University astronomer Wyn Evans says it all came down to the paths of the stars following the impact... Collisions between galaxies aren't all that unusual, and the Milky...
