10 things you should know about the Milky Way

 

Our little star and the tiny planets surrounding it are part of the Milky Way. Its name comes from the Greek chickpeas ("pacifier circle") and Latin through the mammary glands ("galactic road"). In remote areas of the national park, only a few miles from the nearest street light, you will know exactly what the name means and all the fuss. Above is not a black sky, but a glowing ocean of white, blue, green and tan. There are a few things you may not know about our home that is constantly rotating in the universe. The Milky Way is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers

Facts about Milky Way

Content:

·         1. The Milky Way is huge.

·         2. Stuffed stuff stuffed with stuff.

·         3. For spiral galaxies, it is typical...

·         4....and it stands out among all galaxies.

·         5. It is a challenge to figure out its structure from the inside.

·         6. Interstellar dust hinders our view of certain parts of the Milky Way.

·         7. The galaxy spacecraft, but the speed has not increased...

·         8....We are frustrated by this.

·         9. The collision course between the Milky Way and ANDROMEDA. But it doesn't matter

·         10. We put in everything that our research needs.

Our little star and the tiny planets surrounding it are part of the Milky Way. Its name comes from the Greek chickpea ( "nipple ring") and Latin through breast ( "Milky Way Road"). In remote areas in the national park, only a few miles from the nearest street light, you will know exactly what the name means and all the fuss. Above is not a black sky, but a glowing ocean of white, blue, green and tan. There are a few things you may not know about our home that is constantly rotating in the universe.

1. The Milky Way is huge.

The Milky Way is approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers (approximately 621,371,000,000,000,000 miles). Even if it travels at the speed of light, it will take more than 100,000 years to get from one end of the galaxy to the other. Big As Douglas Adams wrote, it is not as big as space itself, and space itself is "huge, huge, and unbelievable." It was just a galaxy . Consider how many galaxies there are in the universe: a recent estimate indicates 2 trillion .

2. Stuffed stuff stuffed with stuff.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that is forbidden to rotate. It is composed of about 300 billion stars and dust, gas, and celestial phenomena (such as nebulae), all of which orbit around a hub called the Milky Way, and have a supermassive black hole called For Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star") as the core. The indicator bar refers to the characteristic arrangement of stars within the galaxy. The interstellar gas is essentially guided inward to provide food to the interstellar nursery. The Milky Way has four spiral arms, and the sun is located inside a minor arm called Orion. We are in the terminal of the Milky Way, but we can. There must be life here, but everything else is a question mark. As far as we know, this may be the Milky Way Paris.

3. For spiral galaxies, it is typical...

If you look at all the spiral galaxies in the partial volume of the universe, the Milky Way will not be very different from anywhere else. Steve Majewski, professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia and principal investigator of the Apache Point Observatory's Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), said: "With the development of the Milky Way, the type of galaxy is quite ordinary." "It There is a very regular form. It is surrounded by the usual star clusters complementing each other. It has a supermassive black hole in its center, and most galaxies seem to indicate that they have black holes. From this perspective, the Milky Way is very beautiful. Ordinary vortex galaxy."

4....and it stands out among all galaxies.

On the other hand, he told Floss that spiral galaxies are generally larger than most other types of galaxies. "If you all look very unusual galaxy, because it is very large, our type is one of the biggest galaxies in the universe exist." From the human perspective, the most important thing in the galaxy, if they exist, next door to the Milky Way Creatures in Andromeda (see Article 9) may feel the same about themselves.

5. It is a challenge to figure out its structure from the inside.

Because we live in the Milky Way, we have a very close observation of the phenomena and forces in the Milky Way, but from an internal point of view, astronomers are at a disadvantage in determining the galactic pattern. Majewski said: "We have a good view of the Andromeda galaxy because we can see the whole thing in front of us." "We have no chance in the galaxy."

In order to figure out its structure, astronomers must think like a band member in a half-time football game. Although spectators in the stands can easily see the letters and shapes made by the marchers on the field, the band cannot see the shapes they are making. Instead, they can only work together in a coordinated way to make these patterns and actions on the court. The same is true for telescopes and stars.

6. Interstellar dust hinders our view of certain parts of the Milky Way.

Interstellar dust further hinders astronomers. Majevsky said: "Dust blocks our light and blocks our view of the distant part of the Milky Way." "Some areas in the Milky Way are relatively blurry because they are located behind huge pillars of dust. And in the wavelength range of light that our eyes can see, we cannot see them clearly." To improve this problem, astronomers sometimes work at longer wavelengths, such as radio or infrared, thereby reducing the effects of dust. .

7. The galaxy spacecraft, but the speed has not increased...

Astronomers can make a fairly reasonable estimate of the quality of the Milky Way galaxy based on the amount of light seen. They can calculate the stars of the galaxy and calculate the weight of these stars. They can explain all the dust and all the gas in the Milky Way. When they calculated the mass of everything they saw, they found that it was far from enough to resolve the gravity that caused the galaxy to rotate.

In short, our sun is about two-thirds from the center of the Milky Way, and astronomers know it orbits the Milky Way at a speed of about 144 miles per second. Majewski said: "If we calculate it based on the amount of matter inside the solar orbit, how fast we should orbit, we should get a speed of 150 or 160 kilometers (93-99 miles) per second,". "In addition, if we only consider what we call luminous matter, the rotation speed of a star is even faster than its rotation speed. Obviously, there are other materials in the Milky Way that are exerting gravity. We call it dark matter."

8....We are frustrated by this.

In the study of the Milky Way, dark matter is a big problem. "In the Milky Way, we study by observing the orbits of stars, star clusters, and satellite galaxies, and then try to figure out how much mass the object's orbit needs to make it move at a certain speed. We can measure it," Maevsky Say. "Therefore, through this analysis of objects with different radii in the entire Milky Way, we actually have a good understanding of the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way, but we still don't know what dark matter is."

9. The collision course between the Milky Way and ANDROMEDA. But it doesn't matter

At some point in the next 400 or 5 billion years, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with each other. The two galaxies are about the same size and about the same number of stars, but there is no cause for alarm. "Although there are 300 billion stars in our galaxy, and a considerable number or even more in Andromeda, when they collide together, no one star will hit another star. The space between stars is so vast. Big," Mayevsky said.

10. We put in everything that our research needs.

There are countless spacecraft and telescopes studying the Milky Way. The most famous is the Hubble Space Telescope, and other space telescopes such as Chandra, Spitzer, and Kepler are also returning data to help astronomers unlock the mysteries of our spiral-shaped stars. The next landmark telescope in development is NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. It should finally be launched in 2019. At the same time, ambitious projects such as APOGEE are doing "Galactic Archaeology" to study the structure and evolution of our spiral houses. APOGEE is a survey of the Milky Way using spectroscopy. It measures the chemical composition of thousands of stars in the entire Milky Way in great detail. The properties of stars around us are fossil evidence of their formation, and when combined with their age, they can help astronomers understand the timeline and evolution of the galaxy we call home.