{"id":15221152,"date":"2026-07-22T17:33:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T21:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/the-milky-way-flipped-its-disk-billions-of-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:33:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:33:36","slug":"the-milky-way-flipped-its-disk-billions-of-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/the-milky-way-flipped-its-disk-billions-of-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Milky Way Flipped its Disk Billions of Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/article_images\/nik8496-cc_20260722_162042.jpg\" alt=\"The Milky Way in the sky over the ESO&apos;s La Silla Observatory in Chile&apos;s Atacama Desert. The Milky Way&apos;s thick disk is full of older stars and rotates more slowly than its thin disk, which is full of younger stars. New research says a cosmic flip is responsible for this puzzling arrangement. Image Credit: ESO\/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Milky Way has two disks, the thin disk where most of the stars dwell, and the thick disk, populated by much older stars. The ESA&#8217;s Gaia mission showed us that the thick disk rotates more slowly than the thin disk. The culprit, according to powerful simulations, was a disk flip in the MW&#8217;s past, driven by a merger.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inmi-source\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/articles\/the-milky-way-flipped-its-disk-billions-of-years-ago\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Universe Today<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Milky Way has two disks, the thin disk where most of the stars dwell, and the thick disk, populated by much older stars. The ESA&#8217;s Gaia mission showed us that the thick disk rotates more slowly than the thin\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15221154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15221152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042.webp",1000,666,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-300x200.webp",300,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-620x413.webp",620,413,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-768x511.webp",768,511,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-940x626.webp",940,626,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042.webp",1000,666,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042.webp",1000,666,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-998x665.webp",998,665,true],"ignition_item":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-670x446.webp",670,446,true],"ignition_item_lg":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042.webp",1000,666,false],"ignition_article_media":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-510x510.webp",510,510,true],"ignition_minicart_item":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-160x160.webp",160,160,true],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-24x24.webp",24,24,true],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-48x48.webp",48,48,true],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-96x96.webp",96,96,true],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/15221152-nik8496-cc_20260722_162042-300x300.webp",300,300,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"news.iNthacity","author_link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/author\/atombo\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/articles\/news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">All News<\/a>","tag_info":"All News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15221152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15221153,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221152\/revisions\/15221153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15221154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15221152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15221152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15221152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}