Our Milky Way galaxy's disk of stars is anything but stable and flat. Instead, it becomes increasingly 'warped' and twisted far away from the Milky Way's center, according to astronomers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).
From a great distance, our galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbit once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars, together with a huge mass of dark matter, provide the gravitational 'glue' to hold it all together.
But the pull of gravity becomes weaker far away from the Milky Way's inner regions. In the galaxy's far outer disk, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way's gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, but they give the disk an S-like warped appearance.
[...] "Somewhat to our surprise, we found that in 3D our collection of 1339 Cepheid stars and the Milky Way's gas disk follow each other closely. This offers new insights into the formation of our home galaxy," says Prof. Richard de Grijs from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and senior co-author of the paper. "Perhaps more importantly, in the Milky Way's outer regions, we found that the S-like stellar disk is warped in a progressively twisted spiral pattern."
An intuitive 3D map of the Galactic warp's precession traced by classical Cepheids (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0686-7) (DX)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @04:46PM
I thought they were talking about us for a moment there . . . Soylentils are found to be warped and twisted. Geez, I don't want everyone to find out about it!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:16PM (5 children)
Photo, or it didn't happen.
Ideally taken from a POV "above" the center of the disk, with the galaxy fitting into the frame. The image needs to have EXIF data including GPS coordinates.
Better: a YouTube video capturing at least one twelveth of a galactic rotation.
There may be some debate among milky way residents as to which way is up or "above" the center of the disk. Hopefully no other races agree with Australia as to which way is up.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Immerman on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:33PM (3 children)
I'll get right on that. You don't mind waiting a billion years or so until the rocket with my camera gets far enough outside the galactic disc, do you?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:58PM
At least the video segment of one twelveth of a galactic rotation will take significantly less than a billion years.
I'll get right on it. Check back in one quarter of a galactic rotation for a progress update.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:50PM (1 child)
far enough outside the galactic disc
And the GPS, it'll be so accurate up there.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:33PM
I believe "Not on Globe" is an infinitely accurate location for a Global Positioning System, is it not?
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday February 06 2019, @11:24AM
Doesn't matter if they agree or not, we have no problem at all with them going on doing things their way while we go on doing things the right way.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:21PM (2 children)
At far enough distances from the inner regions, there may not be enough gravitational pull to keep gas and or stars / planets confined to the galaxy.
Galaxies with a more massive center could / would therefore be bigger.
Is there an upper limit on how massive a galaxy center could be? Such a limit would seem related to the process in which galaxies form.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:41PM
>Such a limit would seem related to the process in which galaxies form.
Unless two galactic cores merged during a galactic collision. Of course the odds of that happening are pretty low, you'd need an almost direct collision between two very small objects, and gravitational capture for a more prolonged merging is extremely unlikely without a third similarly massive object involved. But it could happen.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:57PM
there may not be enough gravitational pull to keep gas and or stars / planets confined to the galaxy.
Yeah, but where is there to go? There's nothing to pull them away, so they may as well stay where they are, meandering around like a river.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:10PM
Toldja it was a beat-up neighborhood. I looked at the residents and knew it was dodgy, but my family ignored my warning.