Hidden Galaxy Discovered Orbiting the Milky Way

What we as a race seem to know and don't casts serious doubt on whether we'll survive - or whether we deserve to.  And we don't mean the big questions, the fundamental quest for existence, we're talking about things we already technically know and how many people actually know them.  For example: far more people know the cast list for this season's Dancing With The Stars than the fact the Milky Way itself has mini-galaxies orbiting it.  That's terrifying.

Yes, the entire Milky Way has mini-moon-a-likes, tiny galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds and the Ursa Majors.  There's even the Fornax Dwarf.  Which sounds like it should have a hundred hitpoints and a 3d6 attack.  All told there are almost a dozen dwarf galaxies orbiting our own, collections of stars whose centers of gravity describe paths around the Milky Way core, and now some scientists say there's one more.

Researchers at the University of California computer-modeled perturbations to the gases at the edges of our solar system, accounting for known effects, and found that one more mass is needed to explain their observations - like working out the moon exists by examining the tides.  This strategy is well known; it's how early astronomers found out where to look for Neptune, examining wobbles in the orbits of other planets.

But it's not a perfect system.  The missing satellite would need to be 1% the size of our home galaxy, and ten billion stars is a pretty hard thing to miss.  It's important to match mathematical predictions against observable evidence, and even then you can go wrong.  Similar orbital "perturbations" to those that located Neptune were used to predict Pluto's location, and were later found to be mistakes.  For years we had a rather small rock that happened to be in the right (or rather wrong) place classified as a planet.

The satellite's immense invisibility could be because of it's location in the plane of the galaxy: instead of conveniently swinging far "above" or "below" the galactic discs as the other satellites are considerate enough to do, the missing mass is predicted to be on the other side of the Milky Way.  Meaning we have the entirety of almost every local star in the sky between us and it, and if it's made up of old or burned-out stars it won't emit enough light for detection until it orbits round to our side again.  Which'll be a job for our great-great-great-greatest-to-the-nth-degree descendants to detect.

The result?  Another awesome idea which requires more evidence - but when your day job is detecting hidden galaxies, you'll never sit at your desk cursing TPS reports.

Luke McKinney

Milky Way May Have Huge Hidden Neigbour http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327213.500-milky-way-may-have-a-huge-hidden-neighbour.html

Comments

[miss]

Don't tell the Milky Way it's the center of attention.
(Whispering) It might get an attitude.

[fan]

the thing about reading your posts is that you write like i think. you have that wonderful sense of wonder at the majesty of the universe that is missing from the general population, which i don't understand at all. well done sir, keep up the good work.

[velocity.wave]

Yes it's true that the general population is unaware of many of the great, amazing, and super-cool ideas and theories involved in science.

Many are ignorant about the unimaginable, awe-inspiring vastness and grandness of the universe, that blows a human mind away just to contemplate it.

But that's ok. Not everyone has to be passionate about science.

The great thing about our species is that so many people are passionate and interested in a wide range of topics.

Yes, some people may know more about the latest cast in Dancing with the Stars, as opposed to knowing about the mineral content of Mars' second moon.

But dancing and entertainment is the spice of life, and enhances daily human life. For some it is their passion and interest. And again I see nothing wrong with that.

Just because some people like art, or entertainment, while others like sports, or science, or do woodworking in their spare time... that diversity of interests does not spell doom for the entire human race.

That would be a like an auto-mechanic, shaking his head and saying, "I can't believe how ignorant and stupid people are about the inner workings and shear engineering-beauty of the car engine. Humanity will never survive if people don't start learning to fix their own car engines, change their own oil, and become more mechanically aware."

There are enough scientists and people like us, who read this website, who are passionate enough to keep science surging ahead well into the 21st century, and beyond.

If we were all the same, and had a mono-culture species, that would be boring.

And besides, when I'm at parties and I start talking about fascinating things of science, the universe, the future of artificial intelligence, etc... people at the parties are sometimes amazed and listen to me talk, captivated by the ideas.

And then after that we talk about sports, and hot chicks, and fast cars, and I'm captivated by that as well.

So anyways... the general population may have more of an interest then we suspect. And even if they don't who cares? They have their own passions and interests and that's what makes life interesting.

[ShadowDS]

true velocity, but i don't think his point was ment to be insulting towards those with a passion of art or entertainment (or anything else for that matter). I think he was trying to point out certain things should be common sense...

It's like that jay leno episode a few years back when he went arroun asking the public how many planets are there in a solar system. amoung the hilarous answers, one person said 600!! (given that it's a comedy show they where probably faking it like our friends on springer) but there has been a Nat Geo study where it found that a alarming number of americans could not find the U.S. on a map...

what I am trying to say is having a passion is great. Until it comes at the cost of common sense, then it's just ignorance. But then again, as the old addage goes "Ignorance is bliss".

[Ivar Nielsen]

Satellite vortices/galaxies.

Imagine our galaxy in a quite different cosmological view: There is NO black hole sucking everything in and away in the center of the galaxy. On the contrary: Everything in our galaxy is pushed OUT from the center via the 2 swirling bars and out in the galaxy arms.

Such an outgoing and horizontal swirling outgoing movement from the Milky Way bars creates further swirls in the arms and these energetic swirling arms create again minor galaxies in the surroundings of the Milky Way center.

- Of course this description cannot be scientifical accepted unless the cosmologists rethink the whole lot of the traditional cosmological points of views. This also goes for the general views of galaxies and their stages. There are galaxies on a stage of a smoother ingoing movement assembling molecular gas and dust – not via a black hole, but via a cosmic explosion hitting a molecular cloud that accelerates in swirling formations.

The next state of such swirling assembling of gas and dust is that the gas and dust heats up until it all melts together and explodes horizontally out, for instants as seen with the Milky Way galaxy. Thereby the original cloud has gone trough 2 stages of cosmological development i.e. the “gravitational” forces have moved 2 opposite ways throughout these 2 creational stages. Therefore also the view of the “gravitational laws” has to be reconsidered and changed into a more cyclic and holistic way of views. http://www.steady-state-universe.net

Quote from www.singularvortex.com
“Phenomenon of spiral arm is caused by a furrow created by a satellite vortex with its vortex column stretched in a curved path on accretion disc of the main vortex. Furrows of spiral arms are lagging satellite vortices carried on harmonic vortices in different angular phase and driven further away from the core of the main vortex, spiral arms point away from the core of main vortex. These satellite vortices spin in opposite rotation direction of the main vortex”, unquote. From http://www.singularvortex.com/WFE%20on%20spoke.htm

Ivar Nielsen
Natural Philosopher

[Regg Saavedra]

This "hidden" galaxy is 10 Billion stars of 1 percent of the size of our Milky Way? Wow, I didn't know our own galaxy had recently grown to 1 Trillion stars. Is my math off?

[Marty Ferguson]

The world, the Universe, like the mind, BOGGLETH!!!

M

[claudio]

We from our position in the Sagittarius arm cannot see well many of the parts of the Milky way.

The idea of Ivar that 'Sagittarius A' (our giant black hole ) pictured by Chandra telescope at X-ray is NOT existant and the Phylosophy suggests that the universe is 'steady state' is quite STRANGE as it conflicts with objective obs and tests.

The other idea about Vortexes (relation to galaxy spiral arms are not quite clear)and lack of rotating black holes that spin as trottles ...is also STRANGE.

The fact that the suburb-satellite galaxies like large magellanic cloud (LMC) and small magellanic cloud (SMC) are not only the ones rotating that 'Sagittarius A' ,would suggest to me that periodic mass extinctions (ELE) that were previously only related to ripples of the rotating plane and to our sun going up and down to the average galactic plane.......can now also be related to dwarf satellite galaxies that periodically exert main gravitation disturbances to the external arms like our....with consequent entering in the inner solar system of rain of comets and asteroids of the Kuyper belt and of the Oort Cloud.

If this numerous dwarf galaxies are confirmed it is indeed a great discovery.

Good article Luke : rather interesting.