Understanding of the Galaxy: From childhood, we heard and learned about galaxies. Do we really know what is a Galaxy? Let’s find out how much we know about these mysterious Galaxies in which we are existing.
The Galaxy’s general description is that it’s a cluster of gases and stars that are rotating in the vast expanding Universe. Are we just living in a cluster of gases and stars?
The galaxy in which we are living Milky Way galaxy, how many such galaxies like ours exist in the universe? Does life exist in other galaxies like ours?
Understanding of the Galaxy
Let’s dig deep to learn more and unveil the mystery of the galaxy. Before proceeding further, I like to provide very basic information. We are living on Planet Earth which is located in the solar system. The solar system is a tiny part of the huge milky way galaxy.
Now, that you got the basic idea about the whole process we move on to the next level which is understanding in detail about Galaxies.
What is a galaxy
A massive collection of planets, stars, dust, gas, and the solar system. As we all are very familiar that our solar system is located in one of the four spiral arms of the Milky way galaxy. Another interesting fact and a research subject for scholars is a massive black hole located at the center of the Galaxy.
Common question if we have a massive Black hole in the center of the Galaxy how come we are not sucked into it still? For that, I leave the vastness of the milky way galaxy to your imagination. There is no correct number regarding the vastness of our Galaxy. It approximately takes around 100,000 light-years to cross from one end to another end.
Let’s not go into complex maths to understand light-years in simple terms –
1 light-year = The distance light travels in 1 earth year.
1 light-year = 6.5×10^5 earth years.
So to travel our Milky way Galaxy from one end to another takes around 100,000 light-years = 100,000X6.5×10^5 = 6.5×10^10 years approx.
There are billions of galaxies present in the universe, similar to our Milky Way. However, some have different shapes and colors. The age of our galaxy is 13.51 billion years and the number of stars in a milky way ranges from 100 – 400 billion.
General Discussion
The most common question which doesn’t have an answer to date is “do other galaxies have a life similar to ours?” As we didn’t come in contact with aliens or any kind of life form outside our planet, except in Hollywood movies :). Difficult to answer the above question. The nearest Galaxy is Andromeda Galaxy which takes around 2.5 million years to reach from ours.
Can we travel from one end of our galaxy to another end? Before answering this, first, let’s get into basic facts about our solar system.
Do we really know our moon? If yes, what about the dark side of the Moon? We are hearing much news regarding colonization in MARS, is it even possible? Did we ever cross Our solar system? yes, Voyager 1 was launched by NASA in 1977. The current status of the Space shuttle is that it crossed the Solar system and traveled in Interstellar space outside the solar system. The space shuttle has been traveling for 44 years.
So, it is physically impossible to travel from one end of the Milky way to another. It will be possible when we follow some unrealistic theory like the bending of the Universe’s Warm holes. In my opinion best option will be using telescopes like Hubble which is a big game changer in the field of Astronomy.
Do other planetary systems has names like our solar system? Not only our solar system has a name
How many types of galaxies are there?
Even though there are billions of Galaxies in the Universe, it is categorized into six types, they are:
Spiral, Elliptical, Barred spiral, Irregular, Peculiar, and Lenticular.
Each Galaxy has billions of stars and planetary systems of which we are not fully aware. Even we are not fully aware of our own Milky way galaxy. Scientists identified roughly around 3200 planetary systems in Our galaxy. What is a planetary system? In easy words our Solar system where eight planets revolve around a Sun, which is a star. The above mentioned are some of the facts to get a clear understanding of the Galaxy.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/overview/
