In November 2010, researchers at Strassbourg Astronomical Observatory announced discovering the stars in the Sun’s local neighborhood have an average motion away from the Galactic core with the outward radial velocity increasing for stars increasingly close to the Galactic center; see news story:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-milky-stars-mysterious-ways.html
Stars that are about 6,000 light years closer to the Galactic center than the Sun were found to be moving away from the Galactic center at a speed of about 10 km/second relative to the solar system. At this relative speed they would reach our radial distance in about 180 million years. According to one estimate, the Sun is traveling towards the Galactic center at about 10 km/s. So stars at this 6000 light year distance would be stationary relative to the Galactic center. However, the study found that there was a radial velocity gradient of about 3 km/s per kiloparsec with the radial velocity towards us increasing with increasing distance toward the Galactic center. If this trend were found to continue for distances closer to the Galactic center, stars at a distance of 3000 light years from the GC would be moving radially away from the GC at around 20 km/s, which means they could reach the Sun’s radial distance in about 300 million years.
If future measurements bear out that stars in the inner portion of the Galaxy have a net a net radial motion away from the Galactic center, this would support the subquantum kinetics (SQK) continuous creation theory which predicts that spiral galaxies should be gradually growing in size due to the ejection of matter being continuously created in their cores.
P. LaViolette
Nov. 2011