The Milky Way Galaxy is the home of our Earth. In the vast Cosmos, this is just a large gas cloud. From the inside, the galaxy is a system of gravitationally bound stars, star clusters, interstellar gas, cosmic dust, and dark matter. With the development of new technologies, with the launch of the Hubble infrared space telescope into the Earth's orbit, with the start of operation of ten-meter terrestrial telescopes, it became possible to explore our Universe in more detail and deeper.
Using the galactic positioning system, calculations show that the solar system is located about twenty thousand light-years from the center of our galaxy. It is somewhere in the middle between the center and the outer edge of the galaxy. The habitable zone, that is, the area where life is theoretically possible, extends from the center to the outer edges of the Milky Way in thousands of light years with a radius of thirteen thousand to thirty-five. Only in this range, according to scientists, the planets that make up galaxies can contain liquid water, which means life.
The galactic gas cloud contains hydrogen with a small fraction of helium. Heavier molecules of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen are also present in it. Such elements were formed after the explosion of supernovae.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy. That is, our galaxy has spiral arms in the disk plane. The center of the spiral galaxy forms a disc with irregular rotation. In the center of such a disk, the speed is zero, and at a distance of two thousand light years it increases to two hundred and forty kilometers per second. These values were obtained from space orbit in 2005 using the telescope. Lyman Spitzer. According to scientists' calculations, the Milky Way includes five main spiral arms: Perseus, Orion, Sagittarius, Centaurus, Cygnus.
In addition to arms, dark matter is found in the structure of the galaxy; it is fixed only during gravitational interaction. In the Milky Way galaxy, according to astrophysicists, it makes up one fourth of the total mass of the galaxy.
The Milky Way is thirty kiloparsecs across (about one hundred thousand light years) and three thousand kiloparsecs in thickness (a thousand light years in the bulge - the bar of the galactic spheroidal center), and this is just a small grain of sand on a Universal scale. There are no clear boundaries and it is not clear where intergalactic space begins.
The disk of the galaxy is surrounded by a spheroidal halo, consisting of globular clusters of stars and old single stars. Our galaxy is over twelve billion years old. Its scientists determined this spherical component during measurements.
At the beginning of its history, our solar system, which is part of the Milky Way, was a more aggressive place due to endless collisions and explosions. Early stars formed only from hydrogen and helium. The stars created played the role of reactors, under the influence of which heavier elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and calcium, were formed. When stars die and explode, supernovae are formed, and their remnants after the explosion, in turn, become the building blocks for heavier elements. Our Sun belongs to the third generation of stars in such a series of explosions.
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In the very center of the Milky Way there is an object of enormous mass, the so-called black hole Sagittarius A. It is located at a distance of twenty-six thousand light-years (two hundred fifty quadrillion kilometers) from the Earth.
The galaxy's space is filled with radioactive rays. Such cosmic rays have a destructive effect on the human body, affecting DNA, leading to various mutations. The earth's magnetic field and the solar wind generated by the sun's magnetic field serve as a protective barrier against dangerous rays. The solar wind forms the heliosphere of our system and is a stream of protons and electrons shooting out of the Sun at a speed of a million miles per hour.
Some neighbors in the Milky Way may kill our planet. For example, the orange dwarf Gliese 710 is a star sixty percent more massive than the Sun. It is located in our galaxy and is only sixty-three light years from Earth. At the same time, it continues to approach our planet. When Gliese 710 approaches the Oort cloud (this is at a distance of one light-year from our star), its powerful gravitational field will begin to affect potential comets and change their orbits. The orange dwarf will literally knock them out of the Oort cloud, and they will head at great speed towards the Sun. Then the existence of our planet will be threatened.
Stars come in different colors because they have different surface temperatures. Cool stars such as Betelgeuse (located five hundred light-years away) appear red, and their temperature is about three million degrees Celsius. The hottest ones, for example, Rigel, glow blue, and the surface temperature is eleven million degrees. Stars like our Sun have a temperature of six million degrees and are white in color. Due to the properties of our atmosphere, the sun appears to be yellow, but in fact it is white.
There are binary star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. There are planets without their own stars, which wander the galaxy like lonely wanderers.
Not so long ago, scientists found out that galaxies have the property of absorbing each other. The galaxy that captures the weaker galaxy more powerfully. Gradually pulls its clusters of stars into itself, and as a result of such a capture it will become even wider and more powerful. Our galaxy is such an invader, consuming faint neighboring galaxies. Currently, the Milky Way is slowly pulling in the star clusters of a miniature galaxy called Sagittarius.
As in miniature terrestrial nature, in the colossal nature of the Cosmos there is an endless struggle for coexistence. Our powerful galaxy is also in danger. The death of the Milky Way after a collision with the Andromeda galaxy by cosmic standards is not so far away, just three billion years later. Everything in the Universe comes to an end or rebirth into some new form of being.