Milky Way May Have a Hidden Neighbor

We may have new neighbors. Astronomers think they've discovered the cause of a peculiar gravitational pull on the Milky Way—it's another galaxy hidden behind a giant cloud of cosmic dust, the New Scientist reports. The new galaxy could be as close as 3 million light years away, a relative hop, skip, and a jump.

"We are ignorant about our immediate neighborhood behind the Milky Way," said one of the scientists proposing the theory. He said a radio survey could peer through the dust and confirm or reject the theory. The gravitational pull also could be caused by a hidden cluster of smaller galaxies further away, the scientists said. (More Milky Way stories.)