Overview
- A study published in May 2026 used Gaia astrometry and follow-up spectroscopy to identify 20 very metal-poor stars located unusually close to the Milky Way’s disk.
- All 20 stars sit roughly 7,000 light-years from the Sun and share nearly identical low abundances of heavy elements, a pattern the authors say is consistent with ages above 10 billion years.
- The research team proposes the stars came from a single dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way absorbed early on, a hypothetical progenitor the authors have nicknamed 'Loki', but the interpretation is still provisional.
- The discovery relied on Gaia’s multi-year star catalog to pick candidates and high-resolution spectra from the Canada‑France‑Hawaii Telescope to measure chemical fingerprints, with the team warning that disk crowding and dust complicate detection and age estimates.
- If confirmed by more precise dating, wider surveys, and modelling, the find would expand where astronomers look for ancient merger debris and could change constraints on how the Milky Way grew by swallowing smaller galaxies.