Am I right in understanding we are now back to four galactic arms, instead of two? I know recently it was suggested we had 2 instead of 4.

PS: I like m.p.h. (being American) but it is ok to put them in parenthesis after units. I would rather debate 4 arms or 2 arms rather than debate Imperial or Metric units!

This is a very cool story about our Milky Way Galaxy!

Mr. Salacious should crack a Foster's and just chill.

Ya, it would be a better point if after subtracting personal hallucinations the article had mentioned an "American Year of Astronomy."

Another point for you and others is this site is geared for laymen. Americans in particular. Why? Because it's their largest audience. My guess, this is why miles are used. OR … it's what the source material uses.

Along those lines of being for laymen. They source the article to a CfA press release. You source it beyond that to a source not listed in their source. Assuming you correctly sourced it closer to, or to it's original published source, we can

Having followed up, as far as my interest allows, on your sourcing may it be asked, did you read the material and by doing so happen to notice all the contributers or where you chiefly interested in the contributers? How did you gain access to the original paper? Personal account, academic / institutional account or ? 25$'s a pop in offensive American dollars, why can't they price this in Australian dollars or Euro's, Yen, Pound, Peso, Dinar, Sand Dollars and Glass Beads? It's soooo unfair. But I digress. It must be a bit expensive whatever currency.

So you read the original paper, meant your approval? Good, Good, so uh … why are you here?

Why don't you take a bath and get all that Sand out of your vagina.

Let us read through the well thought out and enjoyable comments/criticisms, not your usual negative and quite franky boring tirades.

It is poignant that the following consecutive quotes appeared in this press release but does not appear in the article here.

“The new VLBA observations of the Milky Way are producing highly-accurate direct measurements of distances and motions,” said Karl Menten of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, a member of the team. “These measurements use the traditional surveyor’s method of triangulation and do not depend on any assumptions based on other properties, such as brightness, unlike earlier studies.”
The astronomers found that their direct distance measurements differed from earlier, indirect measurements, sometimes by as much as a factor of two. The star-forming regions harboring the cosmic masers “define the spiral arms of the Galaxy,” Reid explained. Measuring the distances to these regions thus provides a yardstick for mapping the Galaxy’s spiral structure.
“These direct measurements are revising our understanding of the structure and motions of our Galaxy,” Menten said. "Because we’re inside it, it’s difficult for us to determine the Milky Way’s structure. For other galaxies, we can simply look at them and see their structure, but we can’t do this to get an overall image of the Milky Way. We have to deduce its structure by measuring and mapping,” he added…

Surely the missing tid-bit from Karl Mentene is important, and although paraphrased by Nancy, misses the point that he was from Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

Should Nancy be ceremoniously condemned for this – well actually not at all…

The actual release was; "…issued jointly with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc." – presumably the funding body and the facilitators of the instruments used. All, of course, American institutions and associated bodies. They funded so they deserve the kudos.
However, who IS at fault is those first issuing the statement here. who have just watered down and spoon-feed it to the American public. In the end, the missing words are simple; by saying;
"…the INTERNATIONAL team from xyz is conducting a long-term program to measure distances and motions in our Galaxy."

This gains the necessary support for the significant American contribution here, and decent prestige for their willingness for international co-operation and sharing the spoils. To me this is a a win-win situation.

Yet it seems to me that only reason they didn't do this is the perception by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press were fearful of negative consequences of appearing to the wider community as being somewhat un-American by doing so. If so, its a real pity they did, as all it leaves the American community just that little more isolated and insular, whose single-handed unilateral decision is almost against itself.

As for the metric v. imperial debate, well the fault for this as well is also not actually Nancy's, as the same press release coughs up the just same numbers.

Whilst the material is admittedly written for general consumption, it would not have been too inappropriate to jazz-up the text for a bit more astute and clued-in readership. If there is an criticism, then maybe it is to be sensitive to the contributors to the story as well as the story itself, and perhaps adopt the AAS's guidelines and present metric and imperial measures just to satisfy the broad nature of the audience.

First of all… there is no "international" measuring standard for things. Nor is there a standard on what power you use when you do define a variables value. Don't blurt out crap you don't have any idea about. The IAU doesn't insist on the use or endorse any system.
If you were a real scientist/scholar you would realize this, since you would have read many papers, reports, thesis, outlines, blah blah, and noticed …. THERE IS NO STANDARD when it comes to UNITS OF MEASURE.

Second… Salacious in your attempt to appear more intelligent than everyone, you actually appear more foolish. An intelligent person wouldn't complain about what standard is used, because they are intelligent enough to convert it, and would even relish the challenge! If they didn't know… they would welcome learning it. This should be obvious to anyone with "common sense".

Third… Only a bigot would keep belting out how any one country is the dominant feature here. Since you can't open your mind beyond your own beliefs. I don't think most people really care whether its the international year of astronomy, or the year of the blister. Just because an announcement was made in America doesn't mean there wasn't world wide cooperation; as is the case here. In fact, very few astronomical devices are used solely by one country. All most all are shared with scientist througout the world.
Like anything else, if you have the money, you can use it. Your Aussie dollars also go to paying for an Aussie scientist to use the Keck scope in America. I could go into more detail here, but you have your own predjudiced belief which isn't' going to change.

Fourth… this is an open blog. Full of experts and laymen alike. If you want something more precise and professional, then fork out 14,000 euros a year to join a professional organization and blurt your rediculous ramblings on its web site.

Fifth… I'm sure you heard this a lot…. but everyone is aware what you are. You aren't brilliant in any sense of the word. You are simply an idiot who has to bring up controversy in order to bring sunshine on your face and get noticed; just like a 4 year old attempting to get attention.

You rant and rave about everyone else, yet for someone who bats down others unprofessionalism, you bring up everything in rants without using any objective reasoning or objective language. You simply site narrow views which are unfounded and unscientific in nature. Instead of being the all knowing jerk; if you really are knowledgeable you would spend your time helping others… instead of failing in your attempt to be superior.

You can deny this all you want, but you can't change our scientific, unbiased, and totally objective reasons for 'knowing' this. I'm sure you'll now attempt to deflect all this by rambling back some more BS… but we have science; you only have bad methods!

600000 mph (rotation – verifiably so ?)

"High-precision measurements of the Milky Way disclose our galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood."
Rotating in reference to what ?

A useless scalar in a cosmos of undefined vectors.

Critical analysis of their data by someone with less ego-centric (culturally-centric) perspective might actually yield some credible insights it their data-acquisition methods are not also skewed by their academic religion.

Still, it is an interesting story to read,
even if it considers distance and time using hilariously
different measurement units.

They need that 'yardstick' to measure the miles between the hours they count over the light-years between satellites lost to that fruit-basket measurement system.

"The VLBA can fix positions in the sky so accurately…"

accurately? ROFL

OK, but how's this for a radical idea. Why not print BOTH and avoid any possible confusion?

Units of measurement don't indicate nationality, but a prejudice against a unit of measurement may indicate a prejudice against a nationality, or perhaps just a large ego combined with an inferiority complex.

I'm sure anyone capable of understanding the concept can convert units of measurement at will, rendering the actual choice of units trivial.

Back to real business; let's allow the scientists to sort out who gets the credit, if they even care. Unless any of us are part of the experiment or analysis, we should stick to enjoying the data and the concepts.

It is the "International Year of Astronomy: 2009" and not just the "American Year of Astronomy: 2009"

Also it would help to use the names of the spokesman I.e.."Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics" AND the names of the collaborators. (As shown above, it was far from just the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Perhaps the looser use of "collaboration", as by Nancy here, should also be promoted or focussed on at this AAS Conference.
Both the American and the other contingents should be proud of what they heave learned – but remember it is the ;
"INTERNATIONAL Year of Astronomy : 2009

As to; " Why do you think the authors of this site use "American" miles?" Good question. Could it be because of the particular journalistic style of this article, perhaps?

Actually, the information within this article is based on a paper of the Springer book of the Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings; being"Mapping the Milky Way and the Local Group" (2008). "The scientists" (as this article says) are in fact;; Mark Reid, Andreas Brunthaler, Xu Ye; Zheng Xing-Wu, Karl Menten, Lincoln Greenhill and Luca Moscadelli.
The affiliations of these collaborators are :
Harvard-Smithsonian
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe
Max-Planck-Insitut für Radioastronomie
Shanghai University,
Nanjing University,
Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)
and Arcetri Observatory

You can't get more universal than that.
So if is the case, why not mention this is an international collaborate, rather, as the reader will probably assume, American astronomers alone?

How can a difference in speed of 20% be reflected in your 223 to 226 kps math?
Methinks the man that correcteth, should correcteth correctly.