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A simulation suggests that the region that eventually formed a Milky Way-like galaxy was once populated by thousands of smaller systems, with varied star-forming histories, before they assembled into a spiral disk. This is a model of the Milky Way’s possible early history—not a direct image of its infancy or evidence that thousands of modern-style galaxies merged at once.
What the simulation says about the Milky Way’s beginnings
The project, called MEGATRON, models the region that would become a Milky Way-like galaxy. In the University of Chicago research news release, the simulation starts 180 million years after the Big Bang and follows a two-billion-year interval. It portrays that region as a changing web of smaller systems that gradually coalesce into a galaxy with a spiral disk.
“Thousands of galaxies” is best understood as shorthand for those early progenitor systems in the modeled region. They were not necessarily complete galaxies in the modern sense, and the result does not imply that they all merged simultaneously. The simulation suggests a possible assembly history; it does not show the actual young Milky Way as it appeared.
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The modeled progenitors have different contents and star-forming histories. Some actively form stars; others are quiescent or otherwise have distinct properties. That range matters because a galaxy’s early building blocks need not all look like miniature versions of the present-day Milky Way.
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A prediction of luminous systems without stars
One unusual prediction is that some systems could shine despite containing no stars. The release offers possible explanations rather than a confirmed account: a system might once have had stars that exploded or collapsed into black holes, or it might consist of gas alone. These are predicted possibilities, not established observations of starless luminous objects.
How the model may help explain an iron pattern
The release describes an iron-abundance puzzle in very faint systems. In ordinary faint galaxies, smaller and dimmer examples generally show less iron. In the extremely faint systems discussed in the release, iron appears roughly constant across mass instead. The simulation suggests that explosions of Population III stars could help account for this behavior.
Population III stars are described as the first stars, made only of hydrogen and helium. Their explosions could have contributed iron to their surroundings. The summary does not provide numerical iron measurements or enough detail to establish that this explanation resolves the puzzle, so it should be treated as a proposed mechanism, not a settled conclusion.
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How astronomers can test the predictions
MEGATRON’s predictions can be compared with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. The purpose of that comparison is to identify what matches and what is missing, helping researchers test or refine the model. The release does not say that every prediction has already been confirmed.
Project lead Harley Katz, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, said: “For the first time, we can directly predict what the early Milky Way would have looked like to telescopes like Hubble or Webb.” Here, “directly predict” refers to generating expectations for telescope observations from a simulation—not to directly observing the Milky Way at cosmic dawn.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the reported timeline means
The University of Chicago research news release says the modeled interval begins 180 million years after the Big Bang and spans two billion years. It also reports that running the simulations took three years and that the project produced six papers. The three-year figure is the reported computational project runtime, not time passing in the universe. These figures are attributed to the institutional summary; the summary does not identify individual paper contributions.
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The result is a detailed computational account of one possible path from early small systems to a Milky Way-like spiral. Its most useful next test is whether telescope observations of the early universe match the model’s predicted range of star-forming and starless systems, and the chemical patterns it proposes.
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