Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought 301
Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.
Haha (Score:5, Funny)
Hardly surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:5, Funny)
Good or bad? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good or bad? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, you're going to be saying Voyager wasn't real next...
As if..
In related news... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:5, Funny)
What the F ? (Score:3, Funny)
What the Fudge man, I have been eating Snickers all this time thinking I'm getting more chocolate! Now I find this out?
First measurements were accurate (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is this real information? (Score:5, Funny)
[1] Now known to consist of dark matter and dark energy, which is why you can't see them.
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A good reminder (Score:5, Funny)
WTF is light year (Score:3, Funny)
Say, how many Library of Congress, or elephants, have we got here?
Re:WTF is light year (Score:5, Funny)
I hope that brings it into perspective for you
This has MAJOR consequences... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Monty Python was more accurate than NASA? (Score:4, Funny)
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough...
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the "Milky Way".
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
(Animated calliope interlude)
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:4, Funny)
I reckon it's due to another metric/imperial cockup.
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wikipedia says 1000 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other instances of numbers widely off (Score:5, Funny)
troll alert :D (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is this real information? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Other instances of numbers widely off (Score:3, Funny)
The only way to find out would be to buy the journal article [ed.gov], thrillingly entitled "Modeling the Milky Way: Spreadsheet Science".
Re:Haha (Score:4, Funny)
And you that that spam was a fraud (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Haha (Score:2, Funny)
incre@se your Galaxy thickness! (Score:4, Funny)
thick and sturdy clusters. ladies love dark matter. hawking beautiful einstein copernicus keppler cassini
jplab buzz lightyear wormhole
[sorry--I couldn't resist]
Re:Other instances of numbers widely off (Score:2, Funny)
Are you absolutely sure that you are right? (i.e. you know an absolute truth.) And if you are when you say this, does that mean you are a charlatan, liar or cheat?
Damn it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other instances of numbers widely off (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other instances of numbers widely off (Score:3, Funny)
Read my sig.
You're an arrogant little shit, aren't you?