YosemiteSam
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Hmmm, whatever is causing / caused the Milky Way to warp must be incredibly massive even compared to our (the Milky Way's) central blackhole.
Gotta love dark matter!
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The discovery of a new arm in the Milky Way suggests that our galaxy is warped, say astronomers
In 1852, Stephen Alexander, an astronomer at the College of New Jersey, put forward the radical suggestion that the Milky Way galaxy is a spiral.
But while today's astronomers agree on this general shape, they disagree over the precise structure of the spiral and in particular on the number of arms.
Astronomers have named at least 6 arms and in the 1990s, evidence emerged that the galaxy had a central bar. The uncertainty is easy to understand. Our view of the galaxy shows the nearer stars superimposed on the ones that are further away. And much of the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy is obscured entirely by the central mass of stars at the centre.
Recently, however, a clearer picture has begun to emerge. The growing consensus is that the Milky Way has a central bar with two main arms, called the Perseus Arm, which passes with a few kiloparsecs of the Sun, and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. (The other arms are now thought to be minor structures made up largely of gas.)
Today, Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge provide further evidence of this 2-arm structure but with a twist that explains why astronomers have previously been unable to see it clearly.
Complete Story
Gotta love dark matter!
=========================================================
The discovery of a new arm in the Milky Way suggests that our galaxy is warped, say astronomers
In 1852, Stephen Alexander, an astronomer at the College of New Jersey, put forward the radical suggestion that the Milky Way galaxy is a spiral.
But while today's astronomers agree on this general shape, they disagree over the precise structure of the spiral and in particular on the number of arms.
Astronomers have named at least 6 arms and in the 1990s, evidence emerged that the galaxy had a central bar. The uncertainty is easy to understand. Our view of the galaxy shows the nearer stars superimposed on the ones that are further away. And much of the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy is obscured entirely by the central mass of stars at the centre.
Recently, however, a clearer picture has begun to emerge. The growing consensus is that the Milky Way has a central bar with two main arms, called the Perseus Arm, which passes with a few kiloparsecs of the Sun, and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. (The other arms are now thought to be minor structures made up largely of gas.)
Today, Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge provide further evidence of this 2-arm structure but with a twist that explains why astronomers have previously been unable to see it clearly.
Complete Story
