The Milky Way reaches the attention of all mankind again thanks to an extremely important discovery that was made by scientists, and now we are talking about something that was extremely difficult to achieve. More precisely, scientists managed to study for the first time a portion of a spiral arm that the Milky Way has, and thanks to it they can make more accurate calculations regarding the size of our galaxy, and not only that's all.
The Milky Way is huge, but scientists say that it is impossible to calculate its size because we are inside it, so we cannot see it in its entirety as we look at other galaxies in the universe. NASA has discovered an area full of stars and planets that is an extension of a spiral arm that the Milky Way has, it has a length of about 3000 light-years, but it extends that arm laterally, not in length, as was usual.
Milky Way: INCREDIBLE Announcement, Discovery by Researchers
The Milky Way cannot have the full shape created by scientists because we are inside it and no spacecraft has left it to show us data of this kind. However, the discovery now helps scientists to approximate the shape that the Milky Way has thanks to the shape that its spiral arm takes, the way stars form in its extension being a pretty good indicator about the shape on which he has
"A key property of spiral arms is how tightly they wrap around a galaxy. Most models of the Milky Way suggest that the Sagittarius Arm forms a spiral that has an inclination angle of about 12 degrees, but the structure we examined actually stands out at an angle of almost 60 degrees. When we put the Gaia and Spitzer data together and finally see this detailed, three-dimensional map, we can see that there's quite a bit of complexity in this region that just hasn't been apparent before."
The Milky Way has spiral arms that "hug" it, and scientists can use this information to create 3D models of the galaxy we are part of, but of course they are not 100% accurate. Even in these conditions, the information that scientists can obtain from discoveries of this kind can bring us much closer to understanding the way the Milky Way looks, but also what is actually hidden within it now.
The Milky Way still hides a lot of secrets from humanity and it is unlikely that they will be fully revealed too soon, but scientists are trying to reveal as many of them as possible.
