Milky Way not as 'little' as thought

Take that, Andromeda! For decades, astronomers thought when it came to the major galaxies in Earth's cosmic neighborhood, our Milky Way was a weak sister to the larger Andromeda. Not anymore.

The Milky Way is considerably larger, bulkier and spinning faster than astronomers once thought, Andromeda's equal.

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