What might happen if you got too close to the center of the Milky Way galaxy?
You would be burned up by the galaxy's brightest stars
. You would be spun outwards toward the edge of the galaxy. You would be trapped in the gravitational pul of a black hole.
What is found at the center of the Milky Way galaxy?
We live in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a collection of stars, gas, dust, and
a supermassive black hole
at it's very center. … There is also a bulge in the middle that consists of mostly old stars. When you look at a spiral galaxy face-on, you can see beautiful spiral arms where stars are being born.
What would happen to the stellar orbits near the center of the Milky Way if there was no black hole?
The orbits of many stars in the galaxy – which is only about 200 light-years across – are quite strongly influenced by the black hole.
Removing it would certainly disrupt a number of orbits
. There ultra-compact dwarf population continues to grow, as does the population of supermassive black holes in UCDs.
Is life possible near the center of the galaxy?
Our home galaxy isn't as hospitable to life as you might think. … To support life as we know it, planets must have liquid water and orbit in the right place in their solar systems, not too close and not too far from their star. Similarly,
life will not emerge or survive for long near the centers of galaxies
.
Why can't we measure the distance to the center of the Milky Way?
Because we can't see our Galaxy face-on, its structure, including the shape of its spiral arms, can only be mapped by measuring distances to objects elsewhere in the Galaxy. The astronomers used a technique called
trigonometric parallax
, first used in 1838 to measure the distance to a star.
Does the Milky Way orbit anything?
Our galaxy does indeed!
… The Milky Way is one of two large galaxies that make up what's called the Local Group, which contains some fifty-odd galaxies. The other large galaxy involved is Andromeda, our closest galactic neighbor; our galaxy and Andromeda are slowly orbiting each other.
How many black holes are in the Milky Way?
Most stellar black holes, however, are very difficult to detect. Judging from the number of stars large enough to produce such black holes, however, scientists estimate that there are
as many as ten million to a billion such black holes
in the Milky Way alone.
Do we live in black holes?
We can't calculate what happens in a black hole's singularity — the laws of physics literally break down — but we can calculate what happens on the boundary of an event horizon. …
We might live in a universe within a black hole within a universe within a black hole
. It might just be black holes all the way down.
Where do things go in a black hole?
It is thought that the matter that goes into a black hole gets
crushed into a tiny point at the center called a “singularity”
. That's the only place that matter is, so if you were to fall into a black hole you wouldn't hit a surface as you would with a normal star. Once it's there, it's there.
Which types of radiation do we not see from the center of the Milky Way?
Infrared radiation
lies beyond the red portion of the visible spectrum, and covers thirty times the energy range of visible light. This range allows us to study aspects of phenomena inaccessible to visible eyes.
What if Earth was near the center of the galaxy?
The closer you get to the heart of the galaxy,
the tighter stars are packed together
. Because of this high star density, the Earth would be blasted with a lot more radiation than what the Sun throws at you right now. … This could change the Earth's climate, and cause everything on the planet to either mutate or die.
Does the Milky Way have a habitable zone?
In the case of the Milky Way, its galactic habitable zone is commonly believed to be an
annulus (chubby ring)
with an outer radius of about 10 kiloparsecs (33,000 ly) and an inner radius close to the Galactic Center (with both radii lacking hard boundaries).
How much longer will the Earth be in the CHZ?
Earth could continue to host life for
at least another 1.75 billion years
, as long as nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn't intervene, a new study calculates.
Can you see the center of the Milky Way?
The center of our Milky Way
The center of the galaxy is some 30,000 light-years away.
We can't see directly into it
, because this region is shrouded by dust and gas clouds.
Why does the Milky Way look curved?
Typically, the warped shape of a galaxy is
caused by instabilities on the disk's edge
, where the galaxy's gravitational forces are weaker and objects are more prone to bending and twisting. It's a common phenomenon for spiral galaxies.
How can we see the Milky Way if we're in it?
The stars of the Milky Way merge together into a single band of light. But through
a telescope
, we see the Milky Way for what it truly is: a spiral arm of our galaxy. We can't get outside the Milky Way, so we have to rely on artist's concepts, like this one, to show us how it might look.
