Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought

Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.

Comments

Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it comes with "%30 MORE!" now.

Hardly surprising

[oz1cz]

Obesity is everywhere.

Wikipedia says 1000

[Aaron Isotton]

Wikipedia says it's only 1000 light years thick.

Re:Wikipedia says 1000

[supermari0]

holy astronomy! to the wikipedia edit page... dadadada dadadada!

Re:Is this real information?

[SnowZero]

Is there any physical effect where a galaxy ends? Or are we just talking about an imaginary limit. Yes, you pass a sign that says "Now leaving Milky Way galaxy, pop 13.167B". That is soon followed by a sign reading "Ejected star crossing, next 200,000 light years."

How hard is it to map the galaxy? It's pretty easy actually; We draw the Earth, the rest of the solar system, a few constellations, and a whole lot of "here be dragons[1] (maybe)".

Where's the flaw in my logic? Asking a serious question on slashdot. At night. Clearly.

[1] Now known to consist of dark matter and dark energy, which is why you can't see them.

Re:A good reminder

[martin-boundary]

This reminds me of a famous politician who was mentioning WMD in a speech he was having written, and wanted to cite the original source where they were discovered in a certain country or other. He couldn't find it. No one else he talked to could either. It turns out that what was a common assumption (and turned out false) had never actually been verified. So he winged it.

Re:WTF is light year

[kryten_nl]

1 light-year = 4 * (cost of war in Iraq so far) * (mile/$)

I hope that brings it into perspective for you ;)