William Atkins
Thursday, 15 January 2009 22:38
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 2
A new international study using the Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope found that our galaxy—the Milky Way—is spinning faster and is more massive than previously thought. Maybe one reason why it contains more matter is the discovery that it has four arms instead of two.
The National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (
VLBA), which is a series of radio telescopes located from Hawaii and the Caribbean to New England in the United States, found that the Milky Way is rotating about 161,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) per hour faster than previously thought.
An international team of researchers and astronomers working with the VLBA, which produces very accurate direct measurements of astronomical bodies, states that the Milky Way is rotating about its center at about 914,000 kilometers (568,000 miles) per hour instead of the previously thought 753,000 kilometers (468,000 miles) per hour.
The VLBA data also reviews that the Milky Way is about 50% large (about three trillion solar masses), and approximately 15% wider, than earlier thought.
It is now about the same size as our largest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.
Mark J. Reid (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts) stated,
“No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy in our Local Group family." [National Radio Astronomy Observatory: “
Milky Way a Swifter Spinner, More Massive, New Measurements Show”]
Reid also stated,
"These measurements indicate that our Galaxy probably has four, not two, spiral arms of gas and dust that are forming stars." Two of the arms contain older stars, while the other two arms contain stars that are in the early stages of forming.
The astronomical researchers measured very distant regions of space, with the Earth on opposite sides of the Sun, which were in the early stages of making stars.
Page two continues with updated information on Earth and our Solar System, based on this VLBA data.
