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# Vasily Belokurov, one of the 2026 Kavli Prize laureates in astrophysics, is a galactic archaeologist
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/vasilii-belokurov-odin-iz-laureatov-premii-kavli-po-astrofizike-2026-goda-galakticheskii-arkheolog/
- Published: 2026-06-12T18:02:49.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:50.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Observations, Science, People, Humour

Vasily Belokurov, one of the 2026 Kavli Prize laureates in astrophysics, is a galactic archaeologist. I have read his article about intruders and learnt that the constancy of the starry sky, to which people have prayed from the Palaeolithic to our own day, is an optical illusion the length of an observer's lifetime. It turns out that most stars obediently revolve around the centre of the galaxy in a single stream, but a few break this order on the diagonal, plunge towards the centre and depart again for the outskirts, and so on in a circle. And here galactic archaeology's look at the chemistry of these outcasts reveals the signature of a dwarf galaxy. They contain few heavy elements, which is a sign of slow evolution, typical of a dwarf galaxy, where star formation proceeded sluggishly and the stars simply had no time to be enriched with metals. The alien stars may be the remnants of Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, which the Milky Way swallowed some 11 billion years ago. The collision remade the disc, flung old stars out into the halo, to the edge of the galaxy, and set off a burst of star formation. Curiously, the calm was only temporary. The Large Magellanic Cloud, our most massive satellite, is already pulling the dark halo of the Milky Way towards itself, and the galaxy is once more listing like a ship. One comfort remains: all of this is spread over billions of years, so plans for the coming weekend need not be cancelled.