Announced the most accurate volume of the whole Milky Way

The Milky Way has been "weighed" to the most accurate level ever and the results can help determine how large our galaxy really is.

The most accurate mass of the whole Milky Way

Previously, the mass of the Milky Way had been conjectured through observing the speed of stars , but the rate of error was very large. The results of the latest study are much more accurately stated using a new measurement method.

According to new research, the Milky Way's mass is 210 billion times the mass of the Sun. To come to this result, researchers have devised a new way to estimate our galactic weight.

Instead of using the speed of galaxies, the team led by Dr. Andreas Küpper of Columbia University (USA) observed a structure similar to the flow of stars originating from a the constellation system (smaller than the galaxy, has a spherical shape and consists of thousands of stars), called Palomar 5.

When studying the upper flow, experts claim to be able to observe "vibrations " created by the mass of the Milky Way. Using Columbia's Yeti supercomputer , they created millions of models to find out what volume level corresponds to the observed fluctuations.

The team eventually came to the conclusion that the mass of the Milky Way, with a width of only 120,000 light-years, is 210 billion times the mass of the Sun.The error of this calculation seems to be 20%.

Meanwhile, previous calculations about the mass of the Milky Way estimate it to be 750 - 1,000 billion times the mass of the Sun, but the error is up to 100%.

However, Dr. Küpper notes that, although his calculation results are three times smaller than previously published figures, they cannot be compared directly to each other by the research groups measuring the areas. different areas of the galaxy."It's like quantifying the population of Manhattan with high accuracy, while other studies quantify the population of the larger area of ​​New York City ," explained Küpper.

Specifically, studies have calculated the mass of a much larger part of the Milky Way, with a width of up to 1.8 million light-years. Dr. Küpper added that it is difficult to see where the Milky Way ends and the neighboring galaxy - Andromeda - begins. But most stars in the Milky Way are within 40,000 light-years.

In the future, scientists hope to use more of the flow of Palomar 5 and other stars to improve the calculation. They also want to delve deeper into how to compare our Milky Way to other galaxies in the universe.