A New, Distant Arm of the Milky Way Discovered:

A New, Distant Arm of the Milky Way Discovered: What are the Odds of It Hosting a Life-Zone?

Today in my search for some up to date information on comet Elenin I came across this article from The daily Galaxy.

This discovery was made by two Harvard astronomers Tom Dame and Pat Thaddeus.

A large new spiral arm of the Milky Way peppered with dense concentrations of molecular gas has been discovered by two Harvard astronmers. What are the odds that this new arm might host an Earth-like planet capable of evolving advanced form of life?

This is quite a discovery in my opinion as it is like our part of the galaxy. The other side infact.

Our Milky Way galaxy, like other spiral galaxies, has a disk with sweeping arms of stars, gas, and dust that curve around the galaxy like the arms of a huge pinwheel. The Sun, Earth, and solar system are located in a spur of material that lies between two of the spiral arms, collectively orbiting around the galaxy about 25,000 light-years from its center. Because the Milky Way contains copious amounts of dust that blocks our optical views, it is extremely difficult to study the galaxy from our vantage point within the disk.

Below is an image of the New Arm of our galaxy.

The Milky Way's basic structure is believed to involve two main spiral arms emanating from opposite ends of an elongated central bar. But only parts of the arms can be seen - gray segments indicate portions not yet detected. Other known spiral arm segments--including the Sun's own spur--are omitted for clarity. Credit: T. Dame

This to me is quite an exciting discovery because if there is life in this arm then there could quite possibly be life in the other arm.

It’s as if the Milky Way had formed from the inside out, with the older disk stars forming in the dense galactic center about 12 billion years ago. The upshot is that a 6 billion year old terrestrial planet has a potential 1.5 billion-year technology headstart to produce some pretty awesome next-generation iPods.

Anyway here is the link again to the article.

Would be nice to see others views and ideas on this new discovery.
Could there be another "Earth" over the street so to speak??

Milan Cirkovic of the Astronomical Observatory in Belgrade, points out that the median age of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way is about 1.8 gigayears (one billion years) greater than the age of the Earth and the Solar System, which means that the median age of technological civilizations could be greater than the age of human civilization by the same amount.

very cool...

this just shows you point of view and how important it is...

we as humans can only see so much of the picture,
the cycles and patterns of this universe always remind me of the Mayan calenders and the way they work like the gears of our universe.

So much to know and yet so much more to find out, it's like a novel that you love reading and never want to end.

reply to post by -W1LL


Thank you

Yes it is amazing how much we still are finding out about our own neighbourhood.

Originally posted by Kali74
So much to know and yet so much more to find out, it's like a novel that you love reading and never want to end.

I like what you say. It is a lovely way to put it

We have in my opinion found out a lot more this past few years.
The more we advance the more we find out.

It still boggles my mind, to think that our planet is circling around a lonely little star, that is just one of billions upon billions of them, in a galaxy that is just one of billions upon billions of them for all we know.

It seems the harder we look, and the further we look, the more there is to see.

Moreover, the distance expanses of seeming nothingness between each strata of classification seems bigger and bigger as we go out into the cosmos. (i.e. the distance between planets is vast, but between stars, even more vast...between galaxies, even more so, and so on....)

And yet, people still think we are alone in it all.

reply to post by Gazrok


Couldn't agree more. We are most certainly not alone in my opinion. We can not be the only living planet in the Galaxy, solar system or universe.
I used to think about how did all these different living things get here when i was a kid. My favourite thought was imagining a planet with just water and dolphins.

I do miss being a kid

This is a fantastic discovery and I hope there is more on this subject soon.

From the illustration it doesn't look distant, and they are missing a lot of 'arms' in that illustration. Just saying, how can I take this seriously?

Originally posted by Illustronic
From the illustration it doesn't look distant, and they are missing a lot of 'arms' in that illustration. Just saying, how can I take this seriously?

Well is this enough information for you to be taking it serious?
And please remember that space is vast and the illustration is simple that....an illustration!

Some sixteen decades ago, Lord Rosse was the first to point out spiral structure in distant “nebula”… and today astrophysicists Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus are discovering it closer to home. Our Milky Way Galaxy was believed to only have six spiral arms, but their research has revealed an outer extension of the Scutum-Centaurus arm from the inner galaxy.

So there are said to be around six "arms" to our Galaxy. I think what you are missing is the fact that in the illustration they are just showing where the new arm is located.

Is our smoothly constructed galaxy indeed a mirror image of itself? This new evidence suggests the Scutum-Centaurus arm embraces the entire Milky Way – forming a symmetrical, star-forming counterpart to the galaxy’s other arm, Perseus. “Confirmation of the present feature as the ”Outer Sct-Cen Arm” will require a great deal of new data from several telescopes and much observing time over an extended period.” says Thaddeus.

Here is the link to the above information for you to browse for yourself. www.universetoday.com....

There are many other sites that host this information, if you just Google the title of this thread you will find them.