MILKY WAY: OUR GALAXY NOT PINT-SIZED ANYMORE

Take that, Andromeda! For decades, astronomers thought when it came to the major galaxies in Earth's cosmic neighbourhood, our Milky Way was a weak sister to the larger Andromeda. Not anymore. The Milky Way is considerably larger, bulkier and spinning faster than astronomers once thought, Andromeda's equal. Scientists mapped the Milky Way in a more detailed, three dimensional way and found that it is 15% larger in breadth. More important, it is denser, with 50% more mass, which is like weight. The new findings were presented at the American Astronomical Society's convention in Long Beach, California. That difference means a lot, said study author Mark Reid of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. Previously, it was thought that Andromeda was dominant, and that we were the little sister of Andromeda. A bigger Milky Way means the gravity between the Milky Way and Andromeda is stronger. So the long-forecast collision between the neighbouring galaxies is likely to happen sooner and less likely to be a glancing blow. That's at least 2 to 3 billion years away. 
C.S. Chakravarthy
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