Milky Way Heavier Than Thought, and Spinning Faster

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 05, @09:50PM

from the bulking-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes"The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed. This means the Milky Way is equivalent in size to our neighbor Andromeda — instead of being the little sister in the local galaxy group, as had been believed. One implication of this new finding is that we may collide with Andromeda sooner than we had thought, in 2 or 3 billion years instead of 5."