Scientists are increasingly focused on understanding the subtle distortions in the Milky Way’s disk, and new research published this week suggests a galactic merger may be responsible for its characteristic warp. Mingji Deng, Cuihua Du, and Jian Zhang, all from the School of Astronomy and Space Sciences at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, alongside Haoyang Liu and Zhongbcheng Li, present a low-mass model of the Milky Way demonstrating how a past collision with another galaxy , the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger , could have initiated and sustained this warp. Their simulations, utilising the GIZMO code, reveal a dynamic interplay between the dark matter halo and the galactic disk, offering a crucial insight into the evolution of spiral galaxies and…