The Milky Way is becoming bigger and expanding at an unprecedented manner, triggering questions about the cause of its expansion. Distant stars are believed to be drawn to the Milky Way from other galaxies.

Studies show that the unintentional donors of stars to the Milky Way are several smaller galaxies. The Earth's galaxy has a larger and heavier gravitational pull that could sweep in the smaller and weaker stars. One of these dwarf galaxies is the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, which is situated approximately 70,000 light years away from Earth.

Like Us on Facebook

A computer simulation was created by Marion Dierickx of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Avi Loeb to determine whether star-stealing is happening in the Milky Way galaxy. According to Space, of the 11 farthest stars, which are found 300,000 light-years away from Earth, five of these stars were drawn from Sagittarius dwarf around billions of years ago.

Milky way in Death Valley pic.twitter.com/zVnByDnppr

— Best of Galaxies (@BestGalaxyPics) February 3, 2017

Additionally, according to Labroots, the Milky Way's gravitational force functions like an adhesive that positions the stars in their location in the universe. The computer model created by Dierickx and his fellow researchers showed that the five stars were slowly pulled in over time. On the other hand, the six other stars must have been taken away from still unidentified galaxy sources.

The Milky Way is but only one of the many galaxies in the universe. If star-stealing is happening right on the Earth's doorstep, it could be happening as well in other galaxies.