Our galaxy has greater than before its diameter is ten times

The astronomers, led by John Stoke by the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA), reported that the new observations spectrograph Space Telescope "Hubble" forced them to rethink the size of the halo of spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way. So - and significantly change our estimates of their mass.

This entire glowing disc, which we used to call the Milky Way, represents only the tip of the iceberg, nine-tenths of which are lost in the darkness. 

If today the size of the disk of the Milky Way is estimated to be 100,000 light years, and the halo of the galaxy has assumed the dimensions of the disk at tens of thousands of light years, it is now a group of Mr. Drain argues that the diameter of the halo of gas exceeds one million light years - more than ten time visible disk of the Milky Way, or about ten quintillion kilometers.

In general, the "home" of our solar system is a hundred times more extensive than we had imagined it.

Well, while this gas is found in a given because it was driven by supernova explosions from the main disk. But he did not get lost in intergalactic space, and gradually began to converge again with the Galaxy and getting into the drive, take part in the formation of stars.

Building on the work of predecessors in terms of chemical composition and density of the gas clouds, huge halo John's team Stoke evaluates its mass approximately equal to the total mass of stars the average twist galaxy. It was a big surprise, said the head of research.

So now baryonic (normal) matter of galactic disks can easily multiply almost twice that in the future may slightly reduce the proportion of dark matter in the total mass of the universe.

Earlier theoretical predictions of the mass of gas in spiral galaxies give the result, about five times superior to the one that was observed by astronomers. New evidence to reconcile practice with theory, emphasizes the scientist.

The study report presented at a conference on the interactions of galaxies. It was June 27, 2013 at the University of Edinburgh (UK).