This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

The fact that it’s a three-dimensional galaxy suspended in a glass cube should be enough to make any astro-geek drool. The structured chaos of the swirling arms is breathtaking in its grace.

But what makes this astounding? Amazing? Flabbergastizationalistic?

From the Living World website:

A laser was used to etch around 80,000 of the stars in the Milky Way, using three-dimensional data from the Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory.

That means that all those little specs etched into the glass represents a known star in our own galaxy, where it actually exists in relation to our solar system, which is in the exact center of the cube. The galaxy inside this glass cube is to scale. This is what our Milky Way would look like from, say, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

I found this quite a while ago, but it still amazes me every time I look at it. *sighs dreamily* If only I had $800; I could pet it and squeeze it and call it George.

A New Zealand news site is reporting that scientists are now saying that our Milky Way galaxy is 50% more massive than previously thought.

Scientists mapped the Milky Way in a more detailed, three-dimensional way and found that it’s 15 percent larger in breadth. More important, it’s denser, with 50 percent more mass, which is like weight. The new findings were presented Monday at the American Astronomical Society’s convention in Long Beach, California.

For years, the Andromeda Galaxy (shown at right) was thought to be the Milky Way’s bigger sister. But with this new data, astrophysicists believe the Milky Way to be the larger.

Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who authored this study, also says the Milky Way is spinning faster than they originally thought – 568,000 miles per hour around the center.

The increased estimation of the galaxy’s mass can largely be attributed to dark matter. Not until recently has astrophysics been affected by the presence of dark matter, which is the heaviest stuff in the universe.

These new numbers, particularly the mass of the universe, is causing astronomers and astrophysicists to rethink some of their calculations and theories. It’s been known that our Milky Way galaxy is on a collision course with our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, but with a larger mass to calculate, that collision will happen sooner than previously thought.

Don’t worry, though; it’s still 2 or 3 billion years away.

This Sunday, January 3rd, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower will peak in the wee hours of the morning. The meteors will originate from the now-defunct Quadrans Muralis constellation, which is near the constellations of Bootes, Hercules, Draco, and the Big Dipper.

Astronomers believe the Quadrantid meteors are caused by the Earth passing through the littered path of a comet. Chunks of rock and ice are pulled in by the Earth’s gravity where they burn up in the atmosphere. The Quadrantids usually cause about 100 meteors per hour, but astronomers are predicting over 120 per hour this year.

Meteor Showers Online has a sky map, showing you where to look for the meteor shower.