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Vasily Belokurov, Professor of Astronomy, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge

The Milky Way was rewired by a cataclysmic collision billions of years ago. Now it is on course for another

the Milky Way Milky way Mergers galaxy Wikimedia Commons
Composite image of the centre of the Milky Way, created by the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Esa via Wikimedia Commons

Vasily Belokurov is one of three winners of the 2026 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. The award is for uncovering fossil evidence of past galactic mergers that prove how the Milky Way evolved.

No matter the time or vantage point, from a pre-Neolithic cave to a post-lockdown London high-rise, the predictability of the night sky has always been humanity’s symbol of permanence and reassuring stability.

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