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Milky Way Heavier Than Thought, and Spinning Faster
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."
"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."
...this is where we find out that space is convex in some directions and concave in others and not "flat" anywhere, right?