Published in The Astrophysical Journal, a new research has revealed that our galaxy the Milky Way could be 50% bigger than what researchers have so far thought. Going by the claims of the research, the galaxy stretches to 150,000 light-years, not 100,000 light-years.

The study results were derived after using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The research also showed that it was previously wrongly believed that the Milky Way's concentric ring of stars around the center of the galaxy was a ring. The study helped the researchers figure out that it was actually a ripple, and thus proved that the galaxy expands much further. The researchers explained that the Monoceros Ring may actually be part of it.

The location of the ring is more than 65,000 light-years from the middle of the Milky Way. “In essence, what we found is that the disk of the Milky Way isn't just a disk of stars in a flat plane — it's corrugated. We now understand that the galaxy didn't end; the disk is just going up and down — in and out of our view”, said Dr. Heidi Newberg, a professor at Rensslaer Polytechnic University who helped discover the Monoceros Ring in 2012.

Newberg added that they were endeavoring to find more evidence that it was stream. The research took a long time to get this result, he added. The reason he cited behind this was the need to change the whole way of thinking, and it eventually appeared to him as part of the disk.

Astronomers are looking forward to get a higher-resolution, three-dimensional view of the Monoceros Ring with the help of Europe's Gaia telescope. They are currently seeing if ripples found in gases in the Milky Way have any relation with the data that has been derived from stars.