The Low- alpha Splash Population in the Milky Way
The episode discusses a paper on 'The Low-alpha Splash Population in the Milky Way,' which uses APOGEE DR17 data to find over sixty-eight thousand low-alpha stars with halo-like kinematics. The hosts discuss how these stars are chemically compatible with the old thin disk, suggesting formation in place. They compare observational findings to GASTRO simulations, concluding that repeated small interactions within clumpy proto-disks are more significant for galactic structure than single massive mergers.