The Far 3kpc Arm . ... By accident, while preparing a talk on the Galaxy's spiral arms for a meeting of the American Astronomical Society , Tom Dame (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) found it - a new spiral arm in the Milky Way. ... Along with the Near 3kpc Arm whose presence was known since the mid 1950s, the counterpart inner arms now establish that the galaxy has a simple symmetry. ... The discovery of the Far 3kpc Arm has renewed interest in this and other questions about the center of the Milky Way . ...