does the Milky Way disk have spiral structure?

At stars group meeting, David Spergel (Flatiron) was tasked with convincing us (and Price-Whelan and I are skeptics!) that the Milky Way really does have spiral arms. His best evidence came from infrared emission in the Galactic disk plane, but he brought together a lot of relevant evidence, and I am closer to being convinced than ever before. As my loyal reader knows, I think we ought to be able to see the arms in any (good) 3-d dust map. So, what gives? That got Boris Leistedt (NYU), Keith Hawkins (Columbia), and me thinking about whether we can do this now, with things we have in-hand.

Also at group meeting, Semyeong Oh (Princeton) showed a large group-of-groups she has found by linking together co-moving pairs into connected components by friends-of-friends. It is rotating with the disk but at a strange angle. Is it an accreted satellite? That explanation is unlikely, but if it turns out to be true, OMG. She is off to get spectroscopy next week, though John Brewer (Yale) pointed out that he might have some of the stars already in his survey.