Milky way it is part of a discovery that amazes a lot of people, and this is because we are talking about something that completely changes many of the things known so far about our galaxy. More precisely, according to some recent discoveries, it seems that the Milky Way galaxy has a size 2 times larger than initially thought, being 200.000 light years, which means that it hides even more stars and planets than was estimated.
Milky way has this discovery made by the researchers of the University of Astrophysics in Canaria, who worked together with those from the National Astronomical Observatory in Beijing. According to their calculations, based on the analysis of many stars in the Milky Way, and not only, the length of 200.000 light years would be much more correct than anything that has been calculated so far by other researchers, and this means that we have much more to discover future.
The Milky Way: The AMAZING Discovery, What We Knew Totally Wrong
Milky way it has the size calculated from the point where the number of disc stars starts to decrease significantly, these being much younger than the halo stars, and the researchers believe that counting should start from them. More than that, these two types of stars in the Milky Way have different compositions, so they belong to different periods of formation, so I can calculate much more easily when certain parts of the galaxy were born.
"Recent research has doubled the size of the Milky Way galaxy to 200.000 light-years, showing that while the star population is less dense in the outer edge of our galaxy, a higher density extends far beyond what scientists have previously noticed. Between the stars are huge columns of gas and dust, and at its center lurks a black hole weighing 4 million times the mass of our sun."
Milky way it had its size calculated with a process called spectroscopy, it being used to determine the chemical composition of some of the stars that are part of the galaxy at this moment. Until recently, researchers did not believe that stars located at a distance greater than 81.000 light years from the central disk of the Milky Way galaxy were part of it, but based on the spectroscopy study, they completely changed the way of calculating the size of the galaxy.
Milky way it is very big, so big that humanity will probably never be able to fully explore it, but at least we are starting to get an idea of its great size.
