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Newly-Discovered Arm of Milky Way Gives Warped Structure
eldavojohn writes "Researchers are now suggesting that a newly-discovered arm of the Milky Way Galaxy gives it a warped structure. Accumulated evidence leads them to claim that an 18-kpc-long arm exists on the other side of the galaxy and this arm traverses some 50 degrees across our sky as an extension of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm (which is one of the two major arms of our galaxy, the other being the Perseus Arm that we can see much more clearly). The researchers conclude that this extension of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm is partially obscured behind the middle of our galaxy because our galaxy is warped 'like the cap from a freshly-opened beer bottle.'"
I wasn't sure if you meant warped as in sense of humor, or the verb. Now that I know it refers more to the effect of bottle openers on beer caps, I totally get it!
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
That is a lot of beer
Who decided that these are arms? Could they not be legs? What about just appendages? Maybe what we call arms are really the Milky Way's hair. If that were the case it might just throw all of our understanding of cosmology out the proverbial window.
Our galaxy is the warp drive!
Now wait till I'll start my hyperdrive....
See you
those are his noodly appendages. prepare to be touched by them.
Of course it is a warped galaxy, humans evolved in it.
Needs an artists rendition, the second most important thing in astronomy.
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The original article also does not bother to define "kpc." Not being an astronomer, I guessed kiloparsec, but I wasn't sure.
kpc = kiloparsec
1 parsec = 3.26163626 light years according to google's internal unit converter, which, "if my calculations are correct" means 18 kiloparsecs = 58,709.45268 light years.
I bet the new arm has Geth.
yeah spaghetti monster or whatever the fuck..
I remember when smart people posted on slashdot.
Can anyone provide any insight as to how physics would allow this? A near miss with another galaxy, or very dense object? A wandering black hole scooching by and "warping" it? Must take a lot of energy to warp a galaxy.
This barred-spiral structure makes the Milky Way look a lot like NGC 1365.
Here is what it might look like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phot-08a-99-hires.jpg
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Truly may his noodly appendage touch you as it twists throughout our known galaxy.
Probably looks like a baby's arm holding an apple.
I always suspected there was something fundamentally wrong with the galaxy.....
I have still not gotten a good explanation why galaxies aren't thought of as large accretion disks, since there is a large black hole (or more than one) at the center of almost every galaxy.
The article here seems to indicate that what we're seeing might be the equivalent of a 3 dimensional accretion "disk" wherein the center "drains" along the poles.
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than the shape of our own galaxy. I wonder if there's a large space mirror somewhere we can catch a reflection of our galaxy.
"And this, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped."
Arthur Dent, "I've always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
"Captain's Personal Log, Stardate 4309.2. We have established that the thing which destroyed the USS Intrepid and the NGC 1365 system is an incredibly huge but simple cellular being whose energies are totally destructive to all known life."
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
For some time now I have been an expert on the curvature of caps from freshly-opened beer bottles. References available upon request.
Does this alter where the galactic plane is, and the date at which the earth will pass through it (ie the end of the world on Dec 21 , 2012)
If the Mayans didn't know about this their predictions may be wrong.
There ain't no milk today, it wasn't always so, the company was gay, they turned night into day...
Sorry Peter...
Now hand me a 'nuther beer. *hic*
Or is it just the light bending around the massive galactic center that makes it look warped from our perspective?
I'm so used to hearing of "spiral" galaxies and other 2D shapes it's easy to overlook the 3rd dimension. A hurricane is a 2D spiral on a curved surface. Our solar system has a distinct plane. What I've read is that the solar system started as a large amorphous blob that through gravity condensed into a small area, and by conservation of angular momentum, changed whatever small random spin it began with into enough of a force to make the material spread back out, but this time along the equator of the spin, as a disk that eventually birthed planets and moons.
Does this disk formation process scale up from solar system to galactic sizes? Are methods of galaxy formation even all that close to solar system formation? Maybe many of what appear to be spiral galaxies are actually helixes? Possibly very shallow helixes, easy to mistake as spiral? Seems very unlikely that if the Milky Way is a helix, all the other "spiral" galaxies we see really are spirals.
How about an experiment? What formation would you see if you have a cube or sphere of material (liquid or gas) in micro gravity, and you drain the matter through a straw with one end positioned at the center?
His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
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Light travels rather slowly considering the scale of our local group of galaxies.
pretty sure people who do astronomy researchers know enough to take things like this into consideration.
it's all about perspective.
"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.)"
As a resident of the Orion Spur, I resent that statement.
Now hand me a 'nuther beer. *hic*
Seriously though, I guess they outright ignored the twist off variety of bottle caps.
I think I need to hit the cellar, grab some bottles and start experimenting.
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havent had a drink in 6 days, killin me with the analogy!