Figuring out the shape of the Milky Way, if it is inside a galaxy, is very difficult. However, astronomers were able to do this thanks to other similar galaxies. Scientists were also able to find out the location of the Earth and it turned out that we live in a secondary galactic spiral arm. If you look at the night sky, most of the stars are part of this arm, which is called the arm of Orion, as Focus is called, IFLScience writes about it.
Our galaxy
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that has two main spiral arms and two secondary arms. But besides them, there are other sleeves in smaller sizes. Our galaxy is believed to have an approximate diameter of 100,000 light years. We cannot say that our galaxy is big, because there are much bigger ones, but it is definitely not small.
Address of Earth
Billions of planets revolve around hundreds of billions of stars. One such planet is our Earth, which orbits the Sun, an ordinary yellow dwarf star. It is believed that our planet is about half the distance from the center of the Milky Way to its edge; that is, this distance is about 26 thousand light years.
The two main spiral arms of our galaxy are called the Perseus arm and the Centauri arm, and the smaller ones are the Sagittarius arm and the Angle arm. Although these four arms contain most of the galaxy’s stars outside the central bulge and the bridge, the Milky Way still has room for many more stars. Among them stands out Orion’s arm, one of several even smaller spiral arms at the edge of which the Sun and Earth are located. The Orion arm is located between the main spiral arms of our galaxy.
Orion’s sleeve
Orion’s arm gets its name from the famous constellation Orion because it contains such objects as Betelgeuse and the Orion Nebula. On the other hand, most of the stars we see in other constellations are also in this arm.
Over 3,000 light-years thick and 20,000 light-years long are the estimated dimensions of Orion’s arm. Using the example of other spiral galaxies, astronomers found that smaller arms are a common feature of such objects.
Is the appearance of human civilization in this place a coincidence or not?
If you think about our place in the galaxy, then the question may arise: “Is there such a place that the location is a coincidence, or in this place there is something that made life possible and will an intelligent civilization appear?” Perhaps technological civilizations can only appear from the center of the galaxy in just such econdary small spiral sleeves? The answers to these questions are purely theoretical.
It is possible that there are more intelligent civilizations in the great spiral arms, but we won’t know until we have the technology to better study the very distant planets. On the other hand, astronomers believe that, just as stars have a population zone where life can arise on nearby planets, the same zone exists in the Milky Way.
For example, there is too much radiation in the center of the galaxy, which will prevent the emergence of multicellular life. The center of the galaxy is full of colliding stars, and the destruction they cause on the planets will not contribute to the development of civilizations.
On the outskirts of our galaxy, or in the relative voids between the spiral arms, there are too few heavy chemical elements to allow rocky Earth-like planets to form.
Also Read
An โextremeโ solar storm hits the Earth: northern lights observed in Belgium
