This Just In: Milky Way as massive as 3 trillion suns

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Hey Andromeda, you’d better watch out. Turns out your little brother, the Milky Way galaxy, isn’t so little after all. In fact, the Milky Way is just as massive, weighing in at the new estimate of 3 trillion suns, according to a new study.

That means that the two galaxies — the largest members of the Local Group of galaxies — might smash into each other earlier than astronomers had predicted.

According to this article that was published in Science News the Milky Way may be much larger than previously thought. Scientists at Harvard University studied 20 regions of intense star formations and got their data by measuring tiny shifts in the frequency of the masers’ radio emissions.

This may indicate that the Milky Way is growing at a pace that is much faster than we thought affecting the orbits of satellite galaxies around us.

sciencenews.org...

[edit on 1-2-2009 by TooManyHumans]

[edit on 1-2-2009 by TooManyHumans]

Actually, this is old news, I had already made a thread regarding this, almost a month back. Have a look at it.

milky way

Can you imagine how big this universe is???

Originally posted by peacejet
Actually, this is old news, I had already made a thread regarding this, almost a month back. Have a look at it.

milky way

Ah I see my bad. Yea it was not "Just In" that was just the title of the article.

reply to post by twistedworld


It doesnt matter how big the universe is. But how massive our milky way is decides our fate in the next few million years. Based on earlier calculations, milky ways expected collision chance with andromeda was low and it even had a chance of completely missing us, and zip by. But this increased mass, directly corresponds to increased gravity and collision with andromeda is confirmed.

So, I would say, we need to add a new thing to the world is going to end list.

reply to post by TooManyHumans


One thing is odd. Though the news came into the astro groups in the start of the year itself, why is the article dated on jan 31?

Originally posted by peacejet
reply to post by TooManyHumans

 

One thing is odd. Though the news came into the astro groups in the start of the year itself, why is the article dated on jan 31?

Not sure I get Science News every month and it was one of the articles in the Jan 5 issue that I just got around to reading.

The most possible thing is that the web page might have been updated.

so there could be 3 trillion or more planets.

[edit on 2-2-2009 by whiteblack]

reply to post by peacejet


You said,

It doesnt matter how big the universe is. But how massive our milky way is decides our fate in the next few million years. Based on earlier calculations, milky ways expected collision chance with andromeda was low and it even had a chance of completely missing us, and zip by. But this increased mass, directly corresponds to increased gravity and collision with andromeda is confirmed.

So, I would say, we need to add a new thing to the world is going to end list.

We can tell this to the 2012 crowd, it could be the next big catastrophe after nothing happens in 2012.

We won't tell them that the collision is millions of years away and poses little threat to individual stars.


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[edit on Mon Feb 2 2009 by Jbird]