Much remains unknown to scientists about the era immediately following the big bang, when the universe was hot, dense, and devoid of spiral galaxies like our modern Milky Way. Consequently, it's difficult to pin down when the first complex galaxies were born. But we're beginning to close this cosmic gap of empirical darkness.

The Milky Way hasn't been kind to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Located some 70,000 light-years away, the bundle of stars has been shredded and stretched into a filamentous stream by the gravity of the Milky Way.

In celebration of 150 years of exploration, the editors of the British scientific journal Nature asked Northeastern's Center for Complex Network Research to analyze, categorize, and ultimately visualize tens of thousands of articles. The end result is nothing short of cosmic.

By measuring the distance from our sun to thousands of individual pulsating stars scattered across the Milky Way, researchers have charted our galaxy on a larger scale than ever before. Their new three-dimensional map, which provides a broad view of our place among the stars, reveals the S-like structure of the Milk...