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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."
At least now we don't have to worry about our sun going nova, we'll all die in an intergalactic traffic accident first.
One thing that is great about science is that it does have a way of eventually finding errors and correcting them in the face of new evidence.
As far as galactic collisions are concerned, we are in no immediate danger. 2-3 Gy vs 5 is an academic exercise, as the Sun will most likely increase its output sufficiently by then to boil off the Earth's oceans anyway,
Besides, the density of a galaxy (outside of the core) is so low that the chance of a stellar or planetary collision is negligable anyway.
Or, by then, we would have the technology to detect it and either deflect it or GTFO of the way anyhow.
Still, it is nice to know we're not in the pipsqueak galaxy. Hoorah!?!?
Well, that'll show those Andromedans not to attack "smaller" galaxies. Now who's laughing! We will plunder their mass (while watching colateral ejected mass fly out).
oh well.. still leaves plenty of time to debate which is the most robust backup method after all then?
Tell that to the fat guy who got shot with a rifle round. He has a 600,000% weight advantage, yet he's still in ICU on a respirator.
Fat man 0, Remington 1.
I hate printers.
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.