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Milky Way Heavier Than Thought, and Spinning Faster

Posted by kdawson on from the bulking-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed. This means the Milky Way is equivalent in size to our neighbor Andromeda — instead of being the little sister in the local galaxy group, as had been believed. One implication of this new finding is that we may collide with Andromeda sooner than we had thought, in 2 or 3 billion years instead of 5."

11 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. hello... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Mass != weight

    1. Re:hello... by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mass may not equal weight, numerically, but the more mass, the more weight. So the idea is still relevent

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    2. Re:hello... by MrNaz · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, he's pointing out the pretty basic fact that mass and weight are measures of two different things.

      --
      I hate printers.
    3. Re:hello... by l3v1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, mass will only have weight in a gravitational field, where indeed more mass means more weight. Otherwise, more mass only means more inertia.

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      I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
    4. Re:hello... by mpeskett · · Score: 2, Informative

      A massive object in near-zero gravity weighs less than a smaller object in very strong gravity... that's sort of what weight means.

      I agree it's pedantry to insist that the headline be perfectly accurate, but you're still wrong.

  2. Re:The good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know you're trying to be funny but when the two galaxies do meet, the odds are no stars will collide.

  3. Re:The good news by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Informative

    the future cockroach decedents

    They'll be the descendants. We'll be the decedents.

    rj

  4. Re:From TFA by thomasferraro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thank you, makes much more sense now. Agence France-Presse strikes again. They converted mph to km/hr VERY precisely.

    965,600 km/h = 600,000 mph
    804,672 km/h = 500,000 mph

    Abstract of presentation (10aPT Tue Jan 6, if you are in Long Beach CA) is at http://tinyurl.com/9d5rec.

  5. Re:The good news by Dasher42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, at the rate our sun is heating up as a natural part of its life cycle, we've got about 500 million years to get off this rock. So, we don't get to see that firey end anyway.

  6. Re:Science by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Informative

    Still, it is nice to know we're not in the pipsqueak galaxy. Hoorah!?!?

    Well, we never really were. The Local Group contains a few dozen galaxies, of which the Milky Way was already known to be one of the "big 3" (Andromeda, The Milky Way, and The Triangulum galaxies all being pretty big in comparison to most of the others in the group). It's just that now instead of being #2 we might just be #1 :).

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  7. Re:They've already filmed it... by saider · · Score: 2, Informative

    They also tend to fling bits and pieces of themselves into the cosmic void soon after the union. Sometimes those pieces will amount to a new galaxy, but most tend to linger around in an eccentric orbit, trying to escape but never managing to achieve enough velocity.

    --


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