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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: 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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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?