October 2025

The cosmic wave in red and blue, with stars above the galactic disk in red and the ones below it in blue

An article published in the journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics” reports the results of a study that provides evidence that a sort of giant cosmic wave is crossing the Milky Way, propagating from the center outward from the galactic disk, causing a corrugation. A team of researchers led by Eloisa Poggio of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe to map the motions of thousands of young giant stars and Cepheids within the corrugation, reconstructing the wave that generates them. The cause may be the aftermath of an ancient collision with a dwarf galaxy, but follow-up studies are needed to assess this and other possible explanations.