posted
Aussie astronomers redraw the galaxy >From AFP May 06, 2004 A 50-year-old map of the Milky Way will have to be redrawn after Australian astronomers made the astonishing discovery that our spiral galaxy has a huge, outflung arm, New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue.
The vast gassy limb comprises an arc of hydrogen 77,000 light years long and several thousand light years thick, running along the Milky Way's outermost edge and sweeping around the four main arms that swirl out from the galaxy's core. As it is not in the visible part of the light spectrum, it cannot be seen by ordinary telescopes. Astronomers at the Australia National Telescope Facility made the discovery in a project to map the distribution of hydrogen gas across the galaxy. Most of the Milky Way is obscured by interstellar dust, but hydrogen emits radio waves which pass through the dust clouds and which thus make it detectable by radio telescope. "We see it over a huge area of sky," lead astronomer Naomi McClure-Griffiths said. She speculates the arm is a long gaseous tendril that was once joined up with another spiral limb but became detached. The study will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Astronomers are amazed that the feature had been overlooked, New Scientist says. "I was absolutely flabbergasted, it was quite clearly seen in some of the previous surveys but it was never pointed out or given a name," said Tom Dame at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. AFP
Could this be the Galactic Barrier from WNMHGB?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
As long as the Aussie's dont name it something silly like they did all their animals.
Hear that, Andrew? Your animals have silly names!
There. I said it.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Seeing the thread title, I was thinking maybe they'd reversed galactic north like in those down-under/up-over maps.
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Mabye the galaxy spins in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
I might have to ring some 'thing' in the northern galactic hemisphere... I was just told the toilet flush in the reverse direction in that area of the galaxy!
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Overexplaining the joke is kinda becoming Andrew's stock-in-trade.
Apparently too, the whole "toilets flush the other way in the southern hemesphire" is rubbish. The effect is true, but it isn't enough to produce anything notable. Lisa was wrong. The lying cow.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Compared with Jason, of all people. That's pretty bad.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
