The incredible milky way

I live in a city, which means that seeing stars is challenging, and the universe often fades into the background of our busy lives. Streetlights conceal much of the wonder above us. But wouldn't it be amazing to switch off those lights and reconnect with the world beyond our own? That's the essence of what I want these videos to be – brief escapes into the universe. We can embark on this journey into the starry sky above, irrespective of whether we have clear skies, telescopes, or ample free time.

However, let's clarify something. This isn't a video about the entire universe. It's about something more specific. I'm going to leave the universe untouched but turn off one thing to illustrate. That's it; the stars have disappeared, and I can only see one faint smudge in the night sky, which happens to be the Andromeda galaxy. Everything else is just darkness. Imagine a world without stars. What I switched off wasn't the universe but rather the Milky Way, our galaxy.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is our home – a vast oasis of swirling stars. It's so immense and teeming with celestial wonders; it's like a mini universe within itself. To put it into perspective, our sun and solar system reside about here in the galaxy, somewhere between a third to halfway from the center, depending on how you measure it. Some people identify the cloudy line across the night sky on clear nights as the Milky Way, and technically, they're right. But the entire night sky, beyond that line, is also part of it, which can be a bit perplexing.

A more accurate way to describe it is the disc of the Milky Way, and we're somewhere inside that disc. If I were to make the Milky Way as wide as two football pitches and then tilt it a bit, moving it back to where we are in the galaxy, looking from my viewpoint, I'd see that cloudy line stretching across the sky as the edge of the galaxy we're inside. It's brightest when you look towards the center of the galaxy. But if you look to the sides, you're looking away from the galaxy, and there are fewer stars. So, that's what that line represents – the edge of the galaxy that we inhabit.

But here's the thing: this model of the Milky Way isn't big enough to show the details. To get a better sense, we need to make it even larger. How about making it the diameter of the United States of America? If the center of our galaxy were in the middle of Kansas, our solar system would be about here, in Denver, Colorado. In fact, all the stars we see in the night sky would stretch only as far as the city lights of Denver.

Now, let's talk about the size of our sun on this colossal scale. If the Milky Way, at this scale, is the size of the United States, our giant sun would fit between the ridges of a fingerprint on the tips of our fingers. It would be about half the size of a red blood cell. Our galaxy is astonishingly vast.

To put it in even more perspective, if our galaxy were the size of a continent, the orbits of the planets in our solar system would be like tiny swells on the tip of your finger. The universe is mind-bogglingly huge, but our galaxy alone is a wonder to behold.

Now, I know the Milky Way can be overwhelming, making us feel small and insignificant. However, it's essential to remember that humans are incredibly complex beings with an insatiable curiosity and the ability to explore and uncover the mysteries of the universe. In the words of the great Carl Sagan, 'We are a way for the universe to know itself.' So, while we may be small, we are also unique and special.

And if the vastness of the galaxy still feels daunting, consider this: we're probably a lot bigger than you think. We tend to place ourselves at the bottom of the cosmic scale, but we shouldn't forget the world of the small, which is just as vast as the stars. An electron, for example, is so tiny it's considered a point, not a sphere. On this scale, an electron is to a human what a human is to the Milky Way.

So, whenever you feel lost or small while contemplating the cosmos, remember that to an electron, you are a galaxy.