Sometimes scientists receives a shock, after many years of believing that they know something, evidence comes out that proves that just the opposite of what they believe is true. That is why I never accept anything that science tells me as the absolute final word on the subject. Sure there are many things that science tells us, that are probably 100% correct and we can even do tests to verify the data, but this is not true with a lot of things. Look at our solar system for example. It is nice and orderly isn't it? The Milky Way Galaxy is traveling along in space and dragging all the stars along with it in the same direction. This is pretty orderly, sure there is chaos in the Milky Way too, but that is to be expected.

HERE IS A SHOCK FOR YOU! There is new evidence that indicates that our solar system is traveling in a different direction than the rest of the galaxy. Ouch! How could this happen and how did we find out? Scientists were shocked when they used two spacecraft near interstellar space to map the route that we are traveling and found out that we are going in a different direction than everything else. It seems that our solar system just happens to be located in a magnetic field that is either pushing or pulling us at a 60 to 90 degree angle, away from everything else. This is strange, really strange. Could our solar system be sent out of the galaxy some day and if so, are there other solar systems in interstellar space that had the same thing happen to them? Our solar system is surrounded by the solar wind, which forms sort of a bubble around it. As we race away from the rest of the galaxy, the solar system would look bullet shaped to anyone watching it come toward them. This is due to the influence of the graviitational field that is rocketing us away. This is not the end of this study, believe me. This has switched the interest of many scientists, to the on mode.

Illustration Of Solar System Leaving The Milky Way
Graphic Source: Me (you can tell by the poor art work)

In 2004 another discovery was made about our galaxy. This old Milky Way of ours seems to be full of surprises. Scientists in Australia discovered that there is a huge arm around our galaxy that was never discovered before. It is 77,000 light years long. That is quite a large object to have been overlooked, wouldn't you say? It is so long that it sweeps around the four spiral arms of our galaxy. Even though it is there, it does not register in the visible light spectrum, therefore a telescope would not see it. As happens many times in science, it was found purely by accident. The scientists were trying to map hydrogen gas to find out how it was distributed around the galaxy and they discovered the arm. Radio telescopes can detect hydrogen since it can register through the dust of the galaxy, but so did the arm. One scientists believes that the arm was once attached to one of the known arms, but somehow became separated. One scientist stated, "I was absolutely flabbergasted; it was quite clearly seen in some of the previous surveys, but it was never pointed out or given a name,"

We used to think that there wasn't much going on in the outer reaches of the solar system, that is, relatively speaking. This all changed in 2006. The area at the end of the solar system is known as the Kuiper belt. What scientists believed about this region, is that it contains material from the birth of the solar system. Since they believed they already knew this, they thought that they could pick up clues on how the solar system was formed. A powerful telescope can pick up about 1,000 objects, but the small objects evade telescopic observation even by the most powerful scopes. A break through has occurred in telescopic observation. A team in Australia using the Anglo-Australian Observatory has used optical fibre technology to make the telescope more light sensitive thus revealing objects that are far smaller than the smallest previously seen. The method they used was to observe stars and catch the infinitesimal blink that is made with a small object passes in front of it. Needless to say that this all occurs in a fraction of a second. One scientist stated, "Basically our observation showed that that are many more, maybe five or 10 times as many, of the smaller objects than theory predicted." The objects that were found, were estimated to be anywhere from 300 meters to 1 kilometer across. The device that they used was able to monitor 100 stars simultaneously over three weeks. This may not sound like much, but it is the equivalent of watching a single star every night for 3 years. It is felt that there could be over 100 billion objects in the belt, but the people that made the observations stated that it might be a lot more. The telescope was checked vigorously to make sure that nothing else could have caused the star wink.

Another surprise that the Milky Way has for us, is that it contains stars that are out of control and out of what we generally think of as an orbit. They zip through the galaxy at fantastic speeds. It took over 1,000 nights of observing stars by Swedish, Danish and Swiss teams who observed over 14,000 stars that were similar to our Sun, but they found out an astounding fact. There are some stars out there that are moving at incredible speeds. The stars are traveling over 300 kilometers per second. Ouch, stay out of their way or you won't know what hit you. This also made some scientists very happy, because it allowed them to predict where the stars will be in the future and where they were in the past. I imagine this will also make astronomical commercial software even more accurate in predicting star positions, it is already pretty good. This is the very first time in the history of man that he can now run a simulation that is very accurate, that will show what the future really holds. It is now thought that the evolution of the Milky Way was a lot more complicated than first thought and that things like black holes have been stirring things up since the beginning of its formation.

Factious Probe Sailing Through Kuiper Belt
Graphic Source: NASA

When Pluto used to be a planet, it was thought that is was the smallest of the planets, yet larger than any non planet or non moon. So I guess you can imagine what a shock it was to astronomers, when they found out that there was an object in the Kuiper belt that was larger than Pluto. This sealed Pluto's fate and reduced it to just a space object. Xena is larger than Pluto and some suggest that it could be the 10th planet. I can't figure that out since there are now only 8 planets. Oh well! Xena is also known as 2003 UB313. It is about 3,000 kilometers across. This makes it's diameter more than 700 kilometers larger than Pluto. This is the largest object found in our solar system since the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Some astronomers resent the fact that others are calling this a planet, because they think of it as just a giant rock. When they don't want to call it a planet they call it a KBO, which is a Kuiper Belt Object, in other words a rock or a piece of ice. Pluto's detractors argue that Pluto is a KBO, because it has an orbital plane different than any other planet, it has a crazy orbit that brings it inside the orbit of Neptune and it is very small.

Here is the thing, there may be other objects in the Kuiper belt that are larger than Pluto. We might even come across a planet out there some day. What a foreboding world that might be, being so far from sunlight. We are just not able to know what lies out in the far reaches of the solar system, never mind in space. There is a theory that our Sun is part of a dual star system and the two stars revolve around each other, but the distance is too far for us to know this, with the instruments we are using. No one knows if there is any truth to any of this yet, but there is one thing for sure, the Milky Way probably has a lot more surprises for us up its sleeve.