Controlled by unknown gravity, the galaxy is twisting. With 5 billion years to go before the sun explodes, the space environment is changing and the Earth may be affected

Controlled by unknown gravity, the galaxy is distorting, the space environment is changing, and the Earth may be affected

Our home is the Milky Way, and we don't know what this home looks like.

All the pictures we see of the galaxy are not pictures, they are drawings.

Don't blame the scientists for being incompetent, because therein lies the limitation of human beings. Looking at the sky seems to be in sight, but in reality, how far away is the sky?

Because the stars of the Milky Way are so far away from us, no matter how far or near, we look about the same distance, which is called depth of field compression.

It is like we look at the sun and the moon, it looks about the same far, but the sun is 395 times farther than the moon, and 395 times bigger than the moon.

The human perception of the Milky Way is a little bit different, which has changed several times in between.

But this is not unfounded, because many high-energy events are happening in the galaxy, and these high-energy events have an impact on Earth. Some scientists suspect that the mass extinction of life on Earth is due to the solar system in one of the radiation belts of the galaxy.

Galileo invented the world's 1st practical astronomical telescope.

After continuous improvement, in the mid-18th century, the British astronomer Herschel took human observation of celestial bodies to a new level by making his astronomical telescope and also selling astronomical telescopes.

At this time, for the 1st time, the approximate shape of the Milky Way could be measured.

● The shape of the Milky Way was drawn by Herschel at the very beginning, like a crocodile.

At that time, there was no way to tell the distance of the stars, and later scientists discovered a kind of star called father-making variable stars. The brightness of these stars is constantly changing, and their brightness is related to their mass, and each of them has the same size and the same luminosity.

The depth of the universe can be measured by the intensity of the luminosity of the variable stars. This is the time when humans can make distance measurements of galactic stars.

The location of the solar system is actually in the middle of the Milky Way, and no matter which direction to the Milky Way, the distant objects are blocked by stars and dust the near distance. The farther away, the more light is blocked, and the less accurate such observations are.

The solar system is 25,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way, essentially in the inner galaxy. There are also many stars around the Sun, and the boundary of the Milky Way is not easy to see clearly.

Therefore, there are many different theories about the size of the Milky Way.

When the famous American science fiction director Lucas filmed Star Wars, he set the background that the diameter of the Milky Way is 100,000 light years.

For a long time, human understanding of the Milky Way has been fixed in this understanding.

The most typical picture of the Milky Way galaxy.

It is commonly understood that several satellite galaxies next to the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Canis Major galaxy, orbit around the Milky Way. The Andromeda Nebula is a larger galaxy than the Milky Way, with a diameter of 160,000 light-years, which is an accurate number, because the distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda is several million light-years, allowing a clear view of Andromeda in its entirety.

The Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula are the main groups of galaxies, and Andromeda is the boss.

But in fact, the Milky Way is heavier than the Andromeda Nebula, according to current measurements of the velocity of celestial bodies.

Because the escape velocity of the Milky Way is 550 km per second, the escape velocity of the Andromeda Nebula is 470 km per second.

So, the understanding of how big the Milky Way is and what shape it is really in is not very clear yet.

But the latest results from current observations suggest that the Milky Way will certainly be larger than 100,000 light-years, with more conservative estimates of 160,000 to 200,000 light-years, but it could also be up to 1 million light-years.

Using the Japanese Pleiades Telescope, astronomers have found that the density of stars suddenly drops at 500,000 light years, so the radius of the Milky Way is likely to be 500,000 light years, by calculating the density of stars.

● The Japanese Pleiades Telescope, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

To see the full extent of the Milky Way, one would have to fly vertically out of the galaxy for 50 to 500 light years to do so.

However, this requirement can never be reached according to the current technological means of mankind.

There has always been a speculative question about the shape of all the galaxies.

According to the latest observations, the Milky Way is not a flattened burrito, but like a potato chip, with both ends cocked up.

Scientists have classified 2,341 parental-making variable stars that span the Milky Way, taking 206,726 stellar images to infer a side-by-side view of the galaxy.

With the Milky Way at its center, there are dozens of galaxies and dwarf galaxies within 10 million light-years of each other, and their gravitational interactions may cause the Milky Way to warp.

The gravitational force causing the warping of the galaxy must be enormous, and where this gravitational force comes from is not well understood.

When did the warping start to happen? There is no precise conclusion, but this gravitational uptake certainly has an impact on the solar system.

The solar system is currently within the Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way, but this structure is not fixed. It is caused by changes in stellar density, which is called a density wave, and density waves are caused by gravitational uptake. In other words, the Sun will move out of Orion's spiral arm to other places and will approach other material structures. In the vast universe, the Earth is just a very small one, and the surrounding space environment will have a huge impact on the future fate of the Earth, but this controlling power is not in the hands of humans. There are still 5 billion years until the sun explodes, and the changes in the galaxy in between may have a greater impact on the Earth.