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Scientists question the generally accepted description of the Milky Way galaxy
Newsweek writes, UNIAN reports.
According to human perceptions of galaxies in the universe, if you look at the Milky Way from afar, you can see the bright center around which a large disk of stars and gas rotates. And all of this has a relatively flat and stable shape. However, scientists have questioned this description. In fact, our galaxy is further away from the center, more "curved" and twisted. "
Researchers at the Australian University of Macquarie and the Chinese Academy of Sciences made their discovery by creating a new 3D map of the Milky Way, which better determined the shape of the galaxy
"We usually imagine flat spiral galaxies like Andromeda, which we can easily see in a telescope," said co-author Richard de Grieis, but it's not so easy to reproduce the shape of the galaxy.
"It's extremely difficult to calculate. the distance from the Sun to the points of the Milky Way's outer gas disk without the slightest idea of what is actually a similar disk of the galaxy, "said Chinese scientist Chen Xiaondin.
To create their map in 3D , the scientists used the 1339 large pulsed stars known as Cepheides Classics, 20 times more massive than the Sun and 100 000 times brighter: by calculating the duration of their pulsation periods, astronomers were able to calculate accurately The distance to the stars was used as a marker to determine the boundaries of the rest of the galaxy and even its edges.
As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that hydrogen gas at the edges of the galaxy was not a thin plane.The disk would look like a distortion in the form of the letter "S" if we saw it from afar.
"We found that q ue the S-shaped disc was deformed into a spiral pattern more and more spirited, "said De Gray. According to the researchers, such a shape could result from a large rotational force produced by the internal disk of the massive galaxy.
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