Spinning top: An artist's impression of the Milky Way showing the approximate position of our Solar System.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
WASHINGTON DC: The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed, increasing the chance of a collision with another galaxy, say astronomers.
An international team of researchers have used ten telescopes spread out between Hawaii, the Caribbean and the northeastern United States to determine that the Milky Way is rotating at a speed of 161,000 km/h faster than previously thought.
Gravitational pull
That increase in speed boosts the Milky Way's mass by 50 per cent, said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, in research presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week in Long Beach, California.
"No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy," he said.
The larger mass, however, also means that the galaxy has a greater gravitational pull, which heightens the likelihood of collisions with the Andromeda galaxy or smaller nearby galaxies, Reid said.
The Earth's Solar System is located some 28,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way. At that distance, the new measurements show that the galaxy is rotating at a speed of 965,600 km/h, compared to previous estimates of 804,672 km/h, the astronomers report.
The new observations from the network of radio telescopes is "producing highly-accurate direct measurements of distances and motions," said Karl Menten of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, a member of the team.
Difficult to determine
"These measurements use the traditional surveyor's method of triangulation and do not depend on any assumptions based on other properties, such as brightness," Menten said. The direct measurements "are revising our understanding of the structure and motions of our Galaxy."
It is difficult to determine the structure of the Milky Way because the Earth is inside it.
"For other galaxies, we can simply look at them and see their structure, but we can't do this to get an overall image of the Milky Way," added Menten. "We have to deduce its structure by measuring and mapping."
Speeding Milky Way Galaxy
Obviously, this situation requires the recently convened congress to take action now, and request the United Nations to intervene before this travesty continues.
Diplomatic talks need to be established with the Milky Way Galaxy(MWG) to reduce this wanton reckless speed abuse, and a treaty needs to be established.
As a condition, the MWG must surely respect a "no-fly zone" in the territorial space of Andromeda, other Galaxies, etc.
Blue hats from the UN will be dispatched to enforce this no fly zone, and the UN Security Council will doubtlessly need to establish strict sanctions on our galaxy should it continue to violate our established laws of cosmology.
If no proper solution can be achieved via diplomacy, then the Milky Way would have the option of purchasing "Intergalactic Speeding Credits" from Al Gore, which would exchange potential energy from other Galaxies, Super clusters, and other stellar entities for the MWG's lack of respect for the laws of cosmology as defined by the UN.
Hmmm...................
I am not going to tout my physics credentials (because I don't have any), but what about the simple possibility that the speed of the Galactic orbit is ever-increasing?
Previous estimate = 804,672 km/h
Current estimate = 965,600 km/h
Ignore the fact that we are more accurate now. There is a blatant increase in speed - it wasn't just scientific error.
Our solar system (and others) are getting pulled faster and faster towards an inevitable collapse as our galaxy will suffer the same demise as any other collapsing star - which is what many believe lies at the center of the Milky Way (a supermassive black hole).
I don't think there is anything shocking about the findings that our Galaxy is moving faster and is more massive than once estimated. It is collapsing in on itself at a increasing rate. The good news for us is that we won't be here for it to matter. No pun intended.
A better question is:
What does the countdown to our galactic collapse tell us about time, space, and our existence?
Where's Michio Kaku when you need him.....
Allen L. Kelly
alldayallenk@aol.com
Accuracy
I really like that the first guesstimate for the rotating speed of the Milky Way is 804,672 km/h suggesting a precision of 1 km/h when the newest guess estimates it at 965,600 km/h, which gives a difference of only some 150,000 times as large as the precision of the previous guesstimate.
peter
Accuracy 2
Maybe the original estimate was done in miles/hour and then converted to KM/h with increased "accuracy".
If so at least they did not add any decimal places.
Increasing rate of Milky Way
Ooops There goes another rubber tree plant!
How many of sciences theories will be able to streatch that far
YOU ARE HERE
i <3 the picture - all it needs is a little red dot that proclaims YOU ARE HERE. way to make us fell even smaller and more insignificant.
got it all wrong
Even if the Milky Way Galaxy was spinning at even 300 kilometers per hour.There proberly still be little chance of hitting another galaxy.The Galaxies are spaced by tens of thousands of light years.At that distance and speed it would be at least another 300 million years before the Milky Way Galaxy had any chance of hitting another Galaxy.Even if the other Galaxy was speeding towards us at the same speed it would still take hundreads of millions of years before we hit another Galaxy.
> got it all wrong Yes you
> got it all wrong
Yes you did !
WOW
that is cool but I dont wanna die.
No surprise
Our galaxy, like every galaxy, is a matter creator.
Matter is being constantly created in the core ( which is spinning ) and is expelled along each axis.
Not just the collection of stars we call galaxys, but each individual star, planet, and moon is a matter creator.
Every body in the universe is growing. ( earth included )
Every body in the universe creates matter.
A by product of a gravitational field is matter creation.