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Milky Way galaxy is warped and twisted, not fiat

By Pallab Ghosh

Science correspondent. BBC Ne*s

O 1 August 2019    Share

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is "warped and twisted” and not fiat as previously thought, new research shows.

Analysis of the brightest stars in the galaxy shows that they do not lie on a fiat piane as shown in academic texts and popular science books.

Astronomers from Warsaw University speculate that it might have been bent out of shape by past interactions with nearby galaxies.

The new three dimensional map has been published in the journal Science.

The popular picture of the Milky Way as a fiat disc is based on the observation of 2.5 million stars out of a possible 2.5 billion. The artists' impressions are therefore rough approximations of the truer shape of our galaxy, according to Dr Dorota Skowron of Warsaw University.