The goal of the catalogue was to image examples of the weird and wonderful structures found among nearby galaxies, to provide snapshots of different
stages of galactic evolution.
Not only are these stars powerful evidence for an important
theory of galactic evolution, they are also likely to be over 10 billion years old — the dim, but dogged survivors of perhaps the oldest and most massive star cluster within the Milky Way.
A new computer re-enactment of billions of years
of galactic evolution suggests that the Milky Way owes much of its current shape to interactions with a nearby dwarf galaxy.
However, Navarro argues, models
of galactic evolution show that the size of a dark matter halo correlates with that of the galaxy that forms within it.
Spectral and photometric analysis of young stars in the Milky Way and other galaxies, however, show that there are a certain number of young stars that are surprisingly bereft of heavy elements, making them resemble stars that should have formed in the early
stages of galactic evolution.
With rare conceptual daring, Smolin suggests a paradigm shift in cosmological theory that accepts time as the reality, allowing scientists to develop new
theories of galactic evolution and understand global warming.