Milky Way, 15% bigger, 50% more massive.

[summoner]

<p>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476207,00.html</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Wow this could be huge if confirmed. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:271px;background-color:#FFF;border:1pxsolid#999"><tr><td colspan="2"><div style="height:35px"><img src="http://banners.wunderground.com/weathersticker/htmlSticker1/language/www/US/MT/Three_Forks.gif" alt="" height="35" width="271" style="border:0px" /></div>

 

[ZenGalacticore]

It is huge, and long suspected. Hey wait! Why is it huge? Oh yeah, we showed those Andromedans! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>ZenGalacticore</p> </div>

 

[weeman]

<p>We can now issue a "In your face, Andromeda!" radio message....but it's too bad they won't get it for another 2.5 million years. <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-undecided.gif" border="0" alt="Undecided" title="Undecided" /></p><p>Thank you for the link by the way, it just goes to show that the Milky Way might continuously grow larger in our studies to estimate its true size! </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[a_lost_packet_]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>We can now issue a "In your face, Andromeda!" radio message....but it's too bad they won't get it for another 2.5 million years. Thank you for the link by the way, it just goes to show that the Milky Way might continuously grow larger in our studies to estimate its true size! <br /> Posted by weeman</DIV></p><p>Whoa.. even the Milky Way has had to loosen its belt. </p><p>This is pretty big news.&nbsp; I'll be sure to look for more on this weighty subject...</p><p>Not only are we bigger, we're a Steve Austin of Astronomy.. bigger and faster than before..</p><p>&nbsp;</p><h1 class="story"><font size="3">Milky Way A Swifter Spinner, More Massive, New Measurements Show</font></h1><p><em><span class="date">ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2009)</span> &mdash; Fasten your seat belts -- we're faster, heavier, and more likely to collide than we thought. Astronomers making high-precision measurements of the Milky Way say our home Galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood. <br /></em></p><p><em>That increase in speed, said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, increases the Milky Way's mass by 50 percent, bringing it even with the Andromeda Galaxy. "No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy in our Local Group family."</em></p> <p><em>The larger mass, in turn, means a greater gravitational pull that increases the likelihood of collisions with the Andromeda galaxy or smaller nearby galaxies.</em></p> <p><em>Our Solar System is about 28,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center. At that distance, the new observations indicate, we're moving at about 600,000 miles per hour in our Galactic orbit, up from the previous estimate of 500,000 miles per hour.....</em></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="1">I put on my robe and wizard hat...</font> </div>

 

[derekmcd]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Whoa.. even the Milky Way has had to loosen its belt. This is pretty big news.&nbsp; I'll be sure to look for more on this weighty subject...Not only are we bigger, we're a Steve Austin of Astronomy.. bigger and faster than before..&nbsp;Milky Way A Swifter Spinner, More Massive, New Measurements ShowScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2009) &mdash; Fasten your seat belts -- we're faster, heavier, and more likely to collide than we thought. Astronomers making high-precision measurements of the Milky Way say our home Galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood. That increase in speed, said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, increases the Milky Way's mass by 50 percent, bringing it even with the Andromeda Galaxy. "No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy in our Local Group family." The larger mass, in turn, means a greater gravitational pull that increases the likelihood of collisions with the Andromeda galaxy or smaller nearby galaxies. Our Solar System is about 28,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center. At that distance, the new observations indicate, we're moving at about 600,000 miles per hour in our Galactic orbit, up from the previous estimate of 500,000 miles per hour.....&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /> Posted by a_lost_packet_</DIV></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This really isn't that surprising.&nbsp; Pretty tough to measure the Milky Way when you live in it.&nbsp; It's like being in the living room of a house with a big picture window and trying to describe how big the house is, what shape it is.&nbsp; All you can really do is describe the living room with a certain accuracy, maybe a few adjacent rooms (but not very precisely) and make some good guesstimates based on the other houses in the neighborhood.</p><p>I haven't had time to read the paper, but I'm pretty sure the dark matter haters are (wrongly) loving this article figuring that this extra mass is dwindling the need for dark matter.&nbsp; I'd be willing to bet a substantial sum of money that this extra mass is almost exclusively thought to be dark matter. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>

 

[DrRocket]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>&nbsp;This really isn't that surprising.&nbsp; Pretty tough to measure the Milky Way when you live in it.&nbsp; It's like being in the living room of a house with a big picture window and trying to describe how big the house is, what shape it is.&nbsp; All you can really do is describe the living room with a certain accuracy, maybe a few adjacent rooms (but not very precisely) and make some good guesstimates based on the other houses in the neighborhood.I haven't had time to read the paper, but I'm pretty sure the dark matter haters are (wrongly) loving this article figuring that this extra mass is dwindling the need for dark matter.&nbsp; I'd be willing to bet a substantial sum of money that this extra mass is almost exclusively thought to be dark matter. <br />Posted by derekmcd</DIV></p><p>http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2009/mwrotate/</p><p>This seems to be the origiinl source.&nbsp; It sounds as though the increased mass is inferred from revisions of&nbsp;rotation rates.&nbsp; If that is the case, then the mass increase is inferred from the gravity required to hold things together -- and that is a prescription for dark matter.&nbsp; It does not seem to bring us any closer to a determination of what dark matter actually is however.</p><p>I could not find an ArXiv paper on the report, but here is an oveview of the project to obtain better kinematic data. </p><p>http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~reid/gal_structure.html<br /></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>