Galaxy Evolution Discovery Surprises Scientists - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

YAHOO.COM - Disk galaxies like our own Milky Way put the finishing touches on their stunning shapes relatively recently, a new study suggests.

The find will likely surprise many scientists, who had thought such galaxies had been static for more than half of the universe's 13.7-billion-year existence.

"Astronomers thought disk galaxies in the nearby universe had settled into their present form by about eight billion years ago, with little additional development since," lead author Susan Kassin, ofNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "The trend we've observed instead shows the opposite — that galaxies were steadily changing over this time period." click here to read more